If you've ever traveled away from home for any length of time, you may have experienced homesickness. The yearning to just be back in familiar territory, and that ache you feel all over because wherever you are is great — or worse, it isn't — but it just isn't home. Do you know that feeling?

Lately, I've been having that feeling about someone else's home.

When you travel, and truly love the culture and customs of wherever you are visiting, near or far, you come home with an attitude something along the lines of, "It was great, I miss it, but I'm glad to be home." That was the case for me, too, after my month in Germany: I really, really missed my family, dog, and bed. Somehow, though, a year later, I still have a tight feeling in my chest and an air of vague sadness like all I want is to go home.

But the hardest thing about this homesickness is: I'm already as "home" as it gets.

I'm in my own country, my own state, my hometown, and the house I grew up in. If any single place is my home, it has to be here.

I have friends and my entire family here, every school I have ever attended is within 200 miles, and I can find my way around (most of the time) without GPS or detailed directions. I have a key to a house and make trips to the grocery store. I've eaten Chinese food multiple days in a row and watched "Harry Potter" on the floor with my friends.

But if these things are what it takes to make a home, I'm afraid I already have two.

I might not have been able to get around on my own quite yet, but the rest of it was true. I didn't just visit, I lived there. I even had to go to school part of the time.

That's what makes this homesickness for a home that's not my own so difficult. I miss my foreign friends and my host families. I miss my view outside my window and the abnormally high number of roundabouts. I miss the food — boy, do I miss the food.

I have pictures, and I have many, many memories, but many days they seem like they will never be enough to ease my homesickness. And when the time of year in which I was there rolls around, it hits hard how much I miss it.

With regular homesickness, you can curb it when you realize you'll be home soon. With a feeling like this, with no return flight booked, you can't shake the feeling. You may return someday, but there's also the distinct possibility that you never will make it home again.

It's tough sometimes, to love two homes, but there is nothing better than knowing you are always welcome in the home you miss.