The holiday season is a time when everyone can finally put aside the hectic stresses of everyday life, and take a break to relax and celebrate. For many college students, this means taking a trip back home to reconnect with the friends and family they may have left behind. Whether you live across town or across the country, there is a certain homesickness that inevitably comes with the first semester of your freshman year of college. Even for those who thrive on independence and love to be away from home, there is still a feeling of excited anticipation that comes in the weeks before a break. I find myself a bit too eager to hop on the train and return home every time a holiday approaches, and count down the days until I can see my old friends again.
However, this homesickness and eagerness to return comes from a picture-perfect image that I have built up in my mind of what "home" is. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Upon returning home, the excitement is still there, but fades quickly. It is nice to reconnect with friends, but for the most part, there is no dramatic reunion. There comes a certain expectation that everything will be the same; that you will fall exactly back into place when you come home. Sometimes, though, you don't.
How strange it is to feel like only a visitor in your own home. Certain things make the place you left only months ago feel so drastically different -- whether it be a room that has been repainted, a store that has been closed down, or a friend who got a new job. Minuscule details that have been left out of conversation out of apparent unimportance seem major after being so far removed from the situation.
When I was home this past week for Thanksgiving, I found myself making far more small talk with my friends than I had ever imagined. For people who used to talk every single day, there was so much I didn't know, and this surprised me. There were so many new stories, and new characters being introduced into our circle of friendship. Upon seeing pictures and hearing fond memories told with such excitement of the new friends we have made in our separate college adventures, I felt a twinge of jealousy. I wondered if they spoke just as fondly of me to their new friends.This jealousy, however, quickly turned to a feeling of guilt when I came to the realization that I had done precisely the same thing.
What I eventually learned is that my home friends and I had not become any less important to one another. What happened, quite simply, is that our new college friends, in a short period of time, became just as important. By being in such close proximity, we had already learned so much about each other and created a tight knit bond. In just a few short days at home, I already found myself missing the college friends -- family -- that I had just left behind.
In just a few short months, my definition of home has changed drastically. It is no longer just the town of Huntington, but also here at Marist. I'm always going to feel homesick, but the reality of this is that I am always going to be longing for the place where I am not. These two places to me hold equal importance, and there is so much love in both.
I have two homes now, and I wouldn't trade either one for the world.
"If you find yourself a tourist in the city you were born, then it's time to go and define your destination with so many different places to call home."
-Death Cab for Cutie, "You Are a Tourist"
