My home has always been my home. Your home has always been your home. Whether you lived in the same house your entire life or moved to a different state, we all have a place we call home. Just when we are most comfortable, we grow up, graduate high school, and go away to college. Going away to school is one of the scariest, most nerve-wrecking experiences one will encounter in their youth. You're leaving your parents, dog, best friends, and preparing for a new life in a new place.
When you arrive at school on move-in day, your emotions are scattered. You don't know whether you should feel sad, excited, or nervous. You're sad to be leaving everything you have ever known, excited to start a new life and live it up, yet nervous as hell because you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.
But before you know it, you start referring to your college town as "home," and catch yourself off guard while doing it. Did I really just call this place my home? What about my home, home?
Suddenly, just as fast as when you started calling college your home, you're packing up your bags as if you didn't just spend the last eight months here. Before you know it, you're life is packed up in a few boxes and you're saying goodbye to your college friends for the summer.
College is a weird experience. You move to this foreign place with thousands of people you've never met and you experience that thing called "adulthood" for the first time.
Moving home is an even weirder experience. Just when you start getting used to your new home, you have to pack up and move home for the summer. Soon enough you're walking through the front door of your home, home and you find yourself asking 'what place is actually home?'
Moving back to your hometown is a strange experience because you haven't lived there in months. Throughout the school year, you may have gone back for a weekend here and there, but that isn't the same as fully coming back.
When you move home from college, you also experience the weird period of adjustment. In college, you did what you want, when you wanted. If you wanted ice cream at 11 p.m., you got ice cream because you could. If you wanted to go to a party one in the morning, you could. No one could stop you. If you needed something, you had to figure it out on your own because your parents weren't there. College teaches you how to be independent and support yourself, and you learn how to be an adult, or at least attempt to.
It's weird leaving home, home for the first time because it's all you ever knew, but it's even weirder moving home for the summer. Your new friends were there, the person you had become was there, and it was your home. Moving home for the summer is great; there's nothing better than seeing your high school friends, hanging out with your parents, sleeping in your bed, eating home-cooked meals, or playing with your dog. However, it's definitely bittersweet knowing you won't be returning to your college town for a few months.
It's crazy how a new place can become your home. It's weird how you can return to home, home as a completely different person. But ultimately, when you return home, home for the first time and already miss school, that's when you know you're at the right school.
