Stuck in the Middle

What was eating at me wasn’t the anxiety of getting into one particular college or another, but wondering what would happen to my boyfriend and me when the time came to choose colleges. It wasn’t fair, I thought. We had come to a point where we had to break off connections and start fresh. I wanted more say in the matter. I felt as though my relationship was perceived, by most adults and many friends, as inconsequential because I had fallen in love in high school. It surprised me to hear from classmates who had significant others that their relationships weren’t important enough to worry about in comparison to getting into college. I saw their reasoning, but it was hard to understand how they could have such certainty about their priorities. By being expected to make a mature decision about my future while ignoring my boyfriend, I was being treated simultaneously as an adult and as a kid. This was a contradiction that I refused to accept; yet knew I had to go along with. We applied to college, and we waited.