Everyone has a different definition of what they consider home. Some say it's the house you grew up in, or maybe the house you are currently living at. In college, it can either be your house in your hometown or maybe you even consider the town of your college as your home since you spend most of the year living there. For me, I'm not exactly sure where to call home right now.
A few months ago, my family announced that they would be moving from a house that I had lived in for 13 years. I had most of my childhood there. I was 6 years old when we first moved in, so most of my elementary years were spent there. All the birthday parties, Christmases, and memories were spent in this house. That was my home. I found out we were not only leaving this house, but we were leaving the city I had been born and raised in. The city where the majority of my family was raised and continue to live. My entire life had been in this city, and now all of a sudden it would be gone.
I had decided I wanted to move away to college so I knew that Pullman would be my new home once fall came around. Most kids come to college and move to this new place and look forward to going "home" for breaks and the holidays where they have those memories and spent Christmases. It's hard to know I will be going "home" from college to a place I've only ever seen in pictures, to a city where I don't know anyone. I won't get to have the exciting moments of seeing your hometown friends and having them ask you 10,000 questions about your year and all the new stories about what you did. Everything will be different.
As my dad travels back and forth every weekend from our current house on the weekends to the new city where he works on the weekdays, the three-hour drive gets to be a little exhausting. I find myself getting a call from him every Friday night as he travels back to my mom and brother to keep him company, and having to call my mom to tell her all the things I had just told him.
My family struggles to call a place a home, I do as well. For now, we still have our house in the city I grew up, and we also have a house in the new place I will call my "home." When people ask me where I live, I struggle to respond because I'm not really sure. I found myself asking this question over and over and I have finally realized where my "home" is. It's not a place; it's wherever I am surrounded with people that love me. In Pullman, I have so many people that love and care about me and serve as my home. It doesn't matter where I go when I leave Pullman, I know I'll be home because I will have my family.
Leaving my hometown to go to college has been a struggle in itself, and leaving all the people that I care about for good is even more of a struggle. But I know I have family everywhere I go and that they are my "home." I don't need a physical house to be my "HOME."
