Being away from home for most of my life after graduating high school has made me appreciate the little town in which I was raised. I love being able to call it my home. When I am away at college, my hometown just feels like it belongs to me. It is a part of me. Being away from it for so long and learning about everyone else's "homes" has made me realize just how special mine really is.

Not many people can say that just a few miles from the house they spent their life in, the waves crash on the sandy shore. My hometown is simply defined by the beach. Ironically, I never seemed to go to the beach as much as most other locals. Leaving home revealed just how much of this town of beach bums I took for granted.

While spending my life at college, I missed all the sights, sounds, smells, and of course, the people. Nothing compared to being home. When I looked out my window in college, I saw the purple mountains. But when I stepped out my front door at home, I could smell the salty sea in the air. Both are splendid, but I will always be partial to the sea. I remember crying in my dorm room due to how much I missed my friends that I had grown up with. I missed all the humor that only we would understand, and I missed all of our adventures. No college friends could ever replace the friends I spent my childhood with.

When I was attending high school, I knew that my hometown was not like most other places, but I had no idea to what extent. People would travel from all over the country to visit my little suburban town. They would shop in the tiny expensive shops on Main Street, eat at one of our many pizzerias or delis, and then read a book in a lawn chair in the sand. I do not think my hometown will ever cease to attract thousands of tourists every summer. How silly it is that tourists seemed to see my town's true beauty before even I did.

I dreamed about leaving my hometown and traveling to school. I wanted to avoid the seagulls and sand and live within the mountains. I studied hard and improved my academics, and then got into my dream school. I was ready to leave the nest and fly on my own. But as we all know, birds may migrate to somewhere else for one part of the year, but they always end up coming back to where they started eventually.

I appreciate my hometown immensely now. It is where some of my finest and oldest friends reside, and where my heart will always be. No matter where life takes me, I will always end back up in one place, and it's where my journey began.