After graduating high school some of us can’t wait to pack up and move out. Others, like myself, are more hesitant as they think about everything they’re about to leave behind. People handle change in different ways, but one thing is for sure: starting now, coming home won’t be the same.
Don’t get me wrong; home will always be home in the sense of family and free food, but it will change in other ways. It seems strange that you could ever feel any different than you do now or how you did, but it will happen. Your place at home will change just as you will change in your years away at college.
It was a weird feeling saying goodbye to my family freshman year, but I took comfort in the fact that they would always be there. My first semester was rough, and I turned to home as a place to run to. Coming back was like slipping into an old t-shirt; it was familiar. I thought I wasn’t ready to give it up yet, but then things changed. I made friends, and college was suddenly fun. Imagine that! I didn’t feel the need to call or go home as much anymore (sorry, Mom and Dad). By the time freshman year ended I was actually sad that it was over.
Summer turned out to be a little bit of an adjustment, but it was hard to complain when I had home cooked meals, a bedroom to myself, and a laundry room that I didn’t have to walk down four flights of stairs to get to. I was living the good life, but part of me knew I was missing my new life. A few months later summer was over, and I was packed up and ready to leave. I hit the road with the windows down, probably blasting some song that celebrated my sweet freedom. My old life disappeared in the rearview mirror, but I doubt I noticed it then.
Sophomore year became an extension of freshman year, which turned into junior year, then senior year, and now my super senior year. I made friends that became my family and moved off campus into a house that I started calling home. I remember the first time my mom pointed out that I called it that. I felt strange, like I had traded in my old home for a new one, but it was true, and in a way I had. Everything that made it home was here: my bed, my clothes, and even the little things like my favorite coffee cup.
If I had paid a little more attention to the rear view mirror the day I left for sophomore year I might have seen how fast everything was changing, but I didn’t. It’s hard to notice the small things until they pile up and become big things. Freshman year I said goodbye to my parents, twelve-year-old sister, bedroom, and myself.
Since then I’ve been home for dinners, breaks, and random visits, but it’s not the same. My sister isn’t twelve anymore, but sixteen. She’s driven me in a car while I sat in the passenger seat silent and staring ahead. She laughed at me and said, “You know you can talk to me.” I’ve missed a lot, I thought.
I’ve been there, but I haven’t been there. When I went home the other weekend I lived out of a bag. I sat in my old room and looked around at the walls that I had collaged with cut-outs from Vogue and other fashion magazines in high school. Clothes that didn’t make it to college occupied some of my hangers. It had been so long since I actually lived there that the fashion in the cut-outs as well as my own clothes had gone out of style. My mom had made my bed and folded back the covers, like I could just slip into them and how things used to be.
That night I tried to sleep, but all I could think was how uncomfortable I was. I had grown out of my high school self into someone who was caught in this weird limbo of where they now belonged. My home was at college, but my home was also here. I couldn’t have both, but when I tried to pick, half of me was missing. As graduation draws near I can't help but worry about how it will be if I move home again. I’m not ready for curfews and check-in texts, but more than that I’m not ready to fit back into a world that I’ve grown out of.
