That Fall Funk is Here Again

No I'm not sad about it
No I'm not mad about it
Sort of getting used to it
Everybody leaves sooner or later

No I'm not hurt about it
No I'm not sure about it
Must be good at chasing away
Everyone I love sooner or later

Now I always think about it
Yeah I always think about it
There's never nothing left to say
Everybody does sooner or later

I don't know what it is about me
That magnifies my self conscience
Operation numb the pain
Gonna take you higher sooner or later

Gonna keep on trying
Gonna stop this crying
It's just another day
It's just the way

No I'm not mad about it
No I'm not sad about it
Sort of getting used to it
Everybody leaves sooner or later

--From "Sooner or Later" by King's X

Depressing, isn't it? The song came up on random while I was working and I must not have been concentrating too hard on what I was doing because the lyrics really caught my ear (that and the song is a great psychedelic and bluesy tune). It brings back memories of that first fall after college, when most of my friends were heading back to school for another year and I was hitting up the real world.

Most of the friends I had during my senior year of college were from the class below me or younger. I just seemed to mesh a little better with those years. And since I had gone back for an extra semester after graduating, the feeling of graduation never actually seemed to set in. That is, until that fall.

At the time I was living with my parents and commuting to Rochester for work. I liked living with my parents (and it was free rent and food--what's not to love?) and although the commute sucked, I managed to make it through. My job wasn't that tough, but there also wasn't many people my age or that shared common interests with me. That wasn't that much of a big deal during the summer when everyone was home from college, and the spring semester before the summer, when I was working, I felt like it was an internship type of thing. School wasn't too far off, I'd be going back soon... but I actually wouldn't.

Emotionally, I was depressed as all get out that fall since my social circle shrunk to nearly no one, work wasn't all that stimulating, and I had this longing to be doing something but I didn't know what. I simply wasn't happy. Eventually the feeling passed and I worked out of the funk I was in, but for a few months there I struggled with the feeling of everyone leaving and, illogically, thinking it was somehow my fault.

It's been more than a few years now since I've been in school and everyone I knew in college has now also graduated, but I still experience some pangs of loneliness and abandonment when fall rolls through. It's crazy how much that change from college to the real world affected me, and how it left such a lasting impression. I can't believe I still miss college. Or maybe I just hate knowing that I'm getting older.