I’ve been feeling homesick lately, now that none of my family lives in the town I grew up in. Hemet, CA, my hometown, is chiefly famous for the "Ramona Pageant" (“America’s longest running outdoor play”) and for being a place where Bill Murray’s ex-wife owns a house. I remember being jolted by an earthquake when I was 10, only to find out it was just a neighborhood meth lab exploding. I remember the night a drunk driver plowed through my neighbor’s backyard, almost killing her.

So, yeah, I didn’t grow up in Mayberry, but it was home—and now that my family is split between Wyoming and Oklahoma, I find myself missing the chicken soft tacos at Ancho’s and ransacking Superstar Video for the new Sailor Moon VHS.

The idea of home is a funny thing..

This was something that I had to figure out for myself and coming to the realization that I had to relearn things that had never needed questioning. Something that everyone experiences in one-way or another once college becomes a thing and some had never dealt with the question before. There’s a certain fear that accompanies this experience and can lead to many great as well as terrifying moments in a person’s life. So what makes a place home to people and what makes a person who they are?

Knowing something so intrinsic about yourself that it just was, now you struggle to remember what your favorite color or toy was. This questioning can be terrifying, especially when it feels like you’ve woken up—after God knows how long—with amnesia and all you can remember is your name.

You’re left staring down a long, dark staircase and then someone says that you need to move...and keep moving till you hit a block.

You move slowly down the steps that lead somewhere and never seem to end. Sometimes there are others there, emotions or thoughts or memories that are a comfort in the otherwise empty darkness. Other times there are actual people on the outside helping or holding you back from a mental plunge. Sometimes you don’t want to keep going and would rather sit and be stagnant, but that’s born from fear of failure and it’s not a real choice.

This experience of finding oneself is special to everyone and different people will hit it at different times and with varying degrees of progress. The one thing to remember though is that there will be a light at the end and places to rest. When it feels like too much, never feel guilty for stopping to recoup your senses. If you’re like me you take a deep breath, cry a little, then pull yourself up and figure out where you got derailed in those instances.

Take it from someone whose had to stop many times and almost never started again it’s worth more to continue than to stop. Reason being, your relationships can change for the better because you’ve become a fuller version of yourself. You learn that you can stand up for yourself and people may not like that, but that’s their problem not yours. Keep in mind that when it comes to this journey you do you. There are going to be things you find that you don’t like and the choice will be to accept it or leave it. No one will choose the same thing and results will vary, but as long as you stay true to your guns, then they can’t say a damn thing about it.

Fact of the matter is that there is no correct time or way to discover or rediscover who you are as a person. You just have to be brave enough to try and you’ll be surprised by what you may find.