At one point or another, we’ve all found ourselves tucking our belongings into unfamiliar corners and hanging our mementos on strange white walls. These foreign places mark the end of an era: our leaving the nest. It’s rather obvious that adolescents all leave their parents’ homes and set out to make places of our own, but does this move really make the places we grew up stop being home?
This is my fourth year away from my parents, and at this point I still confidently refer to both my mom’s house and my school as home. Upon establishing two homes, my original definition of what made up a home was challenged. Neither home that I have now would fit the bill if I were still defining home as a place with a room of my own, my family, comfort, memories, pets, friends, and familiarity.
Whenever I’m in the middle of a stressful school week, I long to go home, lay in my queen size bed and breath in the smells of my mom’s cooking. Being away from school, I’m comforted by the love of my family, the familiarity of the house I grew up in and the cuddles I share with our pets. But the charm of that always wears off once I’m there for too long. I always find myself feeling out of place as I realize that my mom’s routines have changed, that I have almost no obligations or responsibilities in town and that most of my friends don’t actually live there anymore. I also find it’s especially difficult to coexist with my mom under the same roof now that I’ve established that I’m perfectly capable of handling myself. As much as I love the positive things about that home, I always find myself feeling discontented when I’m there for a long period of time.
On the other hand, my home at school has highs and lows of its own. I love that the academic setting usually sparks conversations of actual substance and that I don’t have to drive anywhere to get to my already too early 8 a.m. I’m fortunate enough to share my 12x12 box of a living space with someone wonderful and kind (and amazingly good at decorating), and I live just a floor away from some of my best friends. College is likely the most social time of our lives, and often being less than a mile from everyone that you want to hang out with is amazing. But then there are the days when all you want to do is nap, and you can’t seem to escape chatting with at least 10 people you don’t want to see. Despite these things, college quickly became a place I felt comfortable calling home, and I only grow more attached to life here.
I suppose that my childhood definition of home is far from correct and that homes, like most other things in life, do not remain unchanged. I’m curious to see if I will ever only call one place home.
