I am currently dealing with a major tragedy. It’s a huge loss in my life. To quote Lil Uzi Vert: “All my friends are dead.”

Well, they might as well be for these next few months because they’re not even on this continent.

Now that my friends are abroad, I’ve been going through the seven steps of grief to deal with my loss. Don’t believe me? That’s the first step, so I’ll explain it.

Disbelief

Wait, all my friends are going abroad fall of my junior year? What? Why? Why does everybody need to be going abroad at the same time? Wait, they’re all going to London together? Was I not invited or something?

I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t. My friends just up and left me to fly across the pond. When I heard, I just didn’t understand. It was like my law professor was explaining a really tough case that just didn’t make sense, or like my math professor explaining a really simple topic.

It just didn’t compute in my head.

Denial

I just blocked it out of my head for a while and pretended it didn’t exist. I’ll be honest, it’s very hard to ignore the same screenshot from the SU Abroad office “accepting” people to study abroad. I put accepting in quotation marks because I don’t see the need to accept someone into a program it seems they don’t reject anybody from.

I didn’t check social media for weeks to avoid the “Congratulations on your admission to the (insert semester and location) program” emails that dominated my newsfeed. I took the whole solipsism route and thought, if I didn’t see it, it didn’t exist. But, when my friends started asking for recommendations on Facebook of places to go in Europe, I was brought down to reality. But also, seriously, you couldn’t find anything to do on the entire continent on your own?

Bargaining

When I finally understood they were actually leaving, they said, “I’m going to London next fall,” and I just responded with, “No thanks,” because I was under the impression that I had a say in the matter. Apparently not.

Then, when I found out the plans were not fully set in stone, I was convinced I could get all my friends to stay. I offered to do their laundry, to bring them chicken tenders every Thursday — or on whatever new convoluted schedule tenders now follow — and anything that would prevent them from leaving campus. Because not only would that mean not seeing them during the semester, but also the summer and winter breaks that surround it.

A full seven months alone might’ve been normal for me in high school, but I was trying to find a way to avoid it in college.

Alas, the fake emergency calls before my friends got on their flights failed and they ended up in a place where the people spell random words slightly different than us.

Guilt

Did I feel guilty for trying to scare them into thinking there was an emergency in my life that would prevent them from going abroad? Sure. But I didn’t feel that guilty when none of them fell for it. I got over this stage quickly, and moved on to the next.

Anger

I began feeling angry when my friends started posting pictures of the amazing time they’re having. Why should you have the time of your life if I’m not doing the same thing? I was pissed that they were showing off the cool places they went on the first week of “school.”

I also got mad that their classes involved going to famous artifacts and taking a million pictures and posting them so everyone else could see. This isn’t the first time in my life that my FOMO turned into MAMA MIA — Mainly Angry, Mostly About Missing It All.

MAMA MIA, here we go again!

Depression

As the semester bored on, and I started hearing less and less from my friends, I got sad. I missed them. I didn’t have them here to support me, buy me food, listen to my problems, give me rides, take me to the movies for free and everything else we love to do together. I didn’t understand why they would leave such a great friend like me.

Acceptance

I was angry and sad for a while — the entire first month of school. But, now that I’ve created a routine for myself that doesn’t involve them, I realize I never needed my friends anyway.

I mean, what kind of friend leaves for months and expects everything to be normal when they get back?

I have new friends now. So to all of my abroad friends: You might as well stay there and have the time of your life. I’m having much more fun making friends with people in my classes. Well, it’s mainly my TAs and professors when I show up to their office hours, but they actually spend time with me — unlike all of you.

Josh Feinblatt is a junior television, radio and film major. He is currently in London, where he flew right after he sent this column to his publisher because his willpower is weak. He can be reached on Twitter @joshfeinblatt, by email at jfeinbla@syr.edu or through Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp!

Published on September 27, 2017 at 3:01 am