I have only been in college for eight months now, and I already feel like a whole new phase of my life has begun. Leaving home seemed extremely hard -even impossible at first, but by September I felt like a new, independent woman. Yes, I missed my family every day, but that is partially why I did so well in school. It is a lot easier to come home and say ‘hey mom, I have a 4.0 GPA’ than, ‘hey mom, I was dropped from two of my classes.’ At first, you think you can skip class and pretty much do whatever you want, but eighteen years of hearing your mother nag on you and demand you to do your chores becomes a second conscience.
It finally comes time to come back home and you think everything will be different, but as soon as you cross the threshold back into your house, everything is just the same. For me, little things changed, like my mom remodeling or doing some gardening. But by the time I am sitting down, eating dinner with my family, it feels like I never even left. The first time I came home for family weekend about five weeks after I left, it felt like going to college was just a dream. Why is this? It is my prerogative that home is not a destination, it is a part of you. It will never leave you, and you will never leave it.
Ever heard the saying home is where the heart is? They weren’t lying. Missing my family is just a side effect of not being at home. I don’t miss my bed, I miss waking up in my bed with my little brother standing over me, demanding I get up and play with him. I don’t miss the home cooking; I miss the person cooking it. The ties we have to home and the feelings we have when we aren’t there are just hearsay, because when we come back home, it feels like we never left.
