I'm currently at my childhood home, still about a week away from the start of my spring semester. Life back in my small hometown has been rather stagnant, and I found myself falling back into the same routines I had set up during high school. I was about to go for a quick walk around the neighborhood when my dad came home from work and asked a single question: "Do you plan on coming with us to Florida this summer?" This simple question was followed up by the unexpected statement of "You're more than welcome to come if you want to."

You spend weeks preparing yourself for the culture shock that leaving for college will provide. You learn that you should participate as much as possible, that your dorm room will be the size of a closet, and that the food will be inedible for the most part. No matter how much you prepare, you're never truly ready to leave. The day will come where you'll have to say goodbye to your hometown, your family, and your everyday life.

Eventually you will get comfortable living on campus, even with the communal showers and thin walls. You'll make friends, memories, and suddenly become accustomed to a new and unique culture. On late nights your roommate will ask for a run to Sophie's to grab coffee, you will host countless nights full of Netflix and Domino's, and you will grow fond of the late night conversations sitting on the green. As soon as you become happy away at school, you will be forced to leave campus.

When you return home, you'll be shocked at how different everything is than how you remembered it. Your sleep schedule will have to somehow be salvaged, you will have to reconnect with friends you haven't talked to in months, you'll be forced to actually make your bed and eat food that doesn't make you gain weight by smell alone. Although this was your life for years, it just doesn't feel right. The friendships you kept easily in high school now seem forced, and your best friends will live miles away. The truth is, once you leave for school, you don't truly have a single home anymore. You have your room at school and your childhood home, of course, but neither of them hold a permanent residence for you.

During this phase, you don't belong anywhere. Over time you will slowly begin pulling things out of your old room, carrying them off to school or packing them away for the future. You feel like a stranger within your own home; It's a temperamental adjustment that all college students will have to face, and all will react differently. I've personally decided to describe this phase as the popular term "limbo," which is described by the Random House Dictionary as "an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place."

You're in transition. It's perfectly normal to feel lost during this time, and you will most likely continue to feel this way until you rent an apartment or a house on your own. Even though you feel like you're a stranger floating through, your home is not defined by a physical four walls and a roof. The posters that once hung on your now bare walls, the old lamp that once sat on your desk, the color paint of the walls...none of that was ever your home. Your true home happens to be your family and friends, the ones that help you grow and make you feel safe.

Your home could be under your favorite blanket, nestled within the arms of your significant other, or sitting on your dorm room floor with your roommate drinking hot chocolate while your television is showing Jess trying to prevent Schmidt from ruining CeCe's wedding. Your home is the smell of a coffee brewing in the morning, or those you care about laughing. Your home is the world, the grass under your feet, the stars shining bright in the night sky. Home is not a place, but a feeling. Once you accept this, you'll come to the realization that you aren't as alone as you think you are.