I come from a small(ish) town where you may not know every person’s business, but you’ve heard a couple times about what Lucy’s grandmother did last week. It was great to live in a place where the grocery store was only five minutes down the road, and I didn’t have to sit in twenty minutes of traffic to get there. I have such a love-hate relationship with my town, and I could not wait to get out of that place and leave it all behind. I always thought that when I left I would never miss it; I thought there would never be a time when I would say “I want to go back home”.
My journey to college was only an hour and a half away from home, but I knew it would feel much longer than that. All I would ever think about were the college memories I’d make with my friends. I wanted to have stories to share that were as unbelievable as the ones my brother shared with me. I was so incredibly excited to leave…up until the final hours of packing my car to get ready to head to the new place I'd call home.
You know that quote that says something about getting a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place you know so well, and you’ll miss the people you love and the person you are right there in that very moment because you know you’ll never be this way again…. something along those lines. Anyways, yes, that feeling really does exist. Right before I was getting in the car to leave, I took one final look around and had that moment… the one like in the quote. I would change as a person, anytime I’d come back to the town I couldn’t wait to escape, something would be different about it. It might not be anything noticeable at first, but with each return I’d notice small changes that would soon be turned into something bigger. Before you know it, you’ll come back home and the Wal-Mart parking lot you learned to drive a car in with your Best Friends has now been turned into a shopping plaza.
Everything changes, and that’s something I was only able to realize whenever I would come home. My interests, my friends, my fashion sense, even the way I slept was different. I would get a sense of sadness anytime I stepped foot in my bedroom and saw photographs of times that were oh so different from now; it’s that moment when you realize how much has changed.
The day you move away from your hometown for college, a job, or just because you want to get out of there, is the day where everything will change. Of course, when you leave you'll miss the people you love, but you'll miss the person you were before you said goodbye. You won't even realize until you come back home, and then it'll hit you. Home isn't home anymore.
