Now that I am home for the summer from my first year of college everything appears to be different. My home town is not quite how I remember it, it seems bigger and somehow that scares me. There have been changes made to the roads, buildings, and even the people. I honestly thought everything would be the same when I came home from the summer and it scares me how it is not the same. It freaks me out knowing this is where I grew up and all my childhood memories happened here, but this past year I made memories in a completely different town, city, and state. People say change is a good thing, and obviously it is. But that does not mean I have to like the changes being made to my life. I just survived my first year of college and now I have to come home. But it is not the home I grew up with, it is a different version.
Maybe it is because of all the independence we are given at college. We are essentially living on our own. Mommy and Daddy can no longer solve all of our problems or come to our rescue with every single thing. Yet now that I am home, they are back in our lives. I am no longer living on my own, instead I am back in my hometown surrounded by memories of how I grew up. How I was raised and how my parents were there every step of the way. Coming back here was weird, but at the same time this is where I belong. I am happy I have a room to myself, I do not have to wear shower shoes, and I can just walk in my sisters room and talk to her face to face not through a computer. But at the same time I can not walk down the hall and into my friends rooms. I can not eat every meal with my friends, infact I will not even see my friends until fall comes around again. This may be even weirder then coming home.
But coming home means I get to see my friends who have grown up with me, seen me through my awkward stages and they know who I am. We all travelled through kindergarten to senior year together creating memories and I would not have it any other way. In a way it is weird coming home after being separated for nine months and knowing they created memories without us. But in a way it makes our bond stronger, it makes coming back to our hometown even better. It allows us to look back at the people we have become and how much we have grown throughout our first year at college. Sure coming home may be weird, you are coming home after being gone for a long time. You are coming home to friends who have grown without you, you are coming home to where all of your childhood memories were made, and you are coming home to your parents. But that is just it, you are home for the summer.
