Going home used to mean returning to your parents' house, where there is a bedroom filled with your stuff. There are childhood pictures on frames, and your sweet stuffed bear hidden underneath your bed. You know exactly what's on the bottom drawer of your desk, even though you probably never use it. This place is the one place where you feel absolutely comfortable.
But that, along with a lot of other stuff, has also changed. Home is now a confusing, abstract thing. Not really a place anymore, it's more of a feeling.
Anyone who has ever moved can probably agree that it feels like you are leaving behind part of yourself. And, at least for a while, you swear that you will someday return, because the place that you are leaving is your hometown.
But that fades after the new place becomes home. Soon, you are struggling to remember exactly what your old house looked like. Was the carpet shaggy or was there hardwood floor on the living room? Was the stove also stainless steel? Not that it matters, because you do remember how it made you feel: like home.
And this new place-- the place you were maybe reluctant to move into-- is giving you a similar feeling. The color of its walls, the shape of its windows, it is all as familiar as the back of your hand. It is becoming your home.
But that is your parents' house. The reality of it is that you will grow up, and you will be going to college, and moving out, hesitantly, to another place that you doubt will ever give you that same feeling.
Until it does.
The day you move into a tiny college dorm, with chipped walls and creaky furniture, you are almost disappointed, but after attempting to make it your own, with familiar pictures and what some would call too many Christmas lights, it somehow feels like home. For the next nine months, it is, because when you whisper "I just want to go home," to your friend in the middle of Biology class, you probably mean that little room, and not the house that is a two-hour drive away.
Then, you go back to your parents' house, and yes, it still feels like home. You still know how to keep the shower from squealing and which step creaks the loudest when you are walking in from another late night with friends.
Even though you feel at home, this house doesn't make you feel the same way it did. You, accidentally, made a home at a university hidden among corn fields. And although you love being home for summer, you are actually looking forward to going back home in the fall, to a new, crummy, and tiny dorm.
