Everyone tells you that your first time back will feel strange. You've always smiled and nodded politely, never able to picture how a place so familiar could feel so foreign. Now, though a little begrudgingly, you understand. For weeks, you've longed to go back home. To sleep in your bed, to watch your T.V, to bathe in your shower without ever having to consider who might be waiting. But stepping off the plane, you don't feel the rush of relief you thought you would, like coming home after a long vacation. Everything looks flat and lifeless, like the back of a postcard.
Your parents pull you in to a hug and at first you welcome them with open arms. But after the second and the third, you start to feel like you're being drowned in affection and every so often you need to come up for air. This makes you wonder if you are a bad daughter. You try to be appreciative, to live in the moment, but you feel like a giant in a doll's house. Everything is too small for you. Your bed is not nearly as comfortable as you remember, there's nothing on TV, and your sister keeps banging on the bathroom door telling you to hurry up.
You walk to your local Starbucks and feel a prick of terror, seeing a girl you knew from high school sipping on a machiatto. You try and fail to stay out of her line of sight. You both smile tightly and ask each other how you've been, so great to see you etc. etc. You hate this. You feel like you're impersonating a dead person (Okay maybe that's a tad dramatic but it's still weird). You hate telling people how school is, you hate reducing five months of your life to "good! and you?" You hate being reminded of the past and having to acknowledge that you are, in fact, changing, faster than you can keep up with. It gives you vertigo trying to remember where everyone went and what everyone's doing and smiling through half hearted conversations about half baked plans. You hate it. You hate it. You. Hate. It. You hate settling back in to old routines, you hate rolling your eyes at your parents, you hate that you can't seem to control it anymore and hate how five months of feeling somewhat independent is thrown down the drain in less than a week.
Your flight back to school leaves tomorrow morning. And you hate that you don't have more time to play tourist in your own town. You hate that it's not quite your town anymore. That night you unfollow all the people from your past that you would not want to run in to at Starbucks. You hug your parents goodnight and tell them what a good job they've done (It's sort of a consolation prize to make up for what a brat you've been, but they appreciate the gesture). The next morning you look down at your home as you are ascending thousands of miles up in to the air. You see all the houses and cars and people shrink in to tiny specs until they are nothing but shapes. The world looks like a patchwork quilt from up there and you wonder where you fit in to it all. You resolve that the answer to this question is probably what you're paying 60 grand a year for. You rest your head back in to your seat, close your eyes, and hope you get your money's worth.
