"So, where's home?"

That question, or some variant of it, is inevitable once you go off to college.

I always answer that question just by saying my home state of Kansas, but sometimes that is not enough for some people and they want to know specifically where which leads to my complicated answer of "I was born in Wichita and lived there most of my life, but my family lives in Lawrence now." which is all factually true, but I here is the thing – I never call any place in Kansas home anymore.

Wichita will always be the town where I was raised, and I will always go see my family wherever they may live, but when I go see my family in Lawrence it feels like I am visiting. I have no strong connection or love for the state I lived my first 18 years in. It never feels like coming home.

I miss the feeling of having a physical place outside of my dorm room to call home. I wish family and home were synonymous for me like it seems to be for most people, but I am adrift in the masses.

I meet people who have lived in the same town, on the same street, in the same home since they were born, and when I enter the house they have spent about two decades in, I feel a pang of jealousy. These people know what home is. They have a place where roots have been planted. I always marvel at the people who have lived in one house the majority of their lives because a life like that just seems like some sort of fiction to me.

I see posts on social media all the time – especially over breaks – of people talking about how much they love their hometowns, how their hometowns always feel like home no matter how long they have been gone, how they miss their hometown or dread leaving it at the ends of breaks and how their hometowns made them who they were.

I have no reverence for the place I was born and went to high school. I know that town like the back of my hand still and I have friends there, but I get no warm and fuzzy feelings thinking about it, no urge to go there and no desire to say living there made me who I am. If I never went back to the town again, I would not lose any sleep.

Stephens is the closest thing I have to a home. I love my college, I always feel welcomed when I return to it, I miss Columbia when I go away and I can say without a doubt Stephens helped make me who I am today. However, I know when I graduate, I will once again be searching for a home.

To those of you who answer the question "where's home?" without an ounce of hesitation, consider yourself lucky.

For those of us who never quite know exactly what to say, you are not the only one out there.