Upon returning to the house she grew up in during the winter break of her freshman year of college, a friend of mine began ranting to me about how badly she wanted to go back to her small school in Boston. She said that while being back in New York was nice for the first two weeks, she was ready to go back to the place she called "home," and how her house in Queens wasn't home anymore.

"The first time you slip up and refer to college as your 'home' in front of your mother, she'll get mad. But it's the truth, and Boston is my home now."

Only being a senior in high school at that point, I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, I know where home is. Having lived in the same house for my entire life, I've always felt a connection to my physical house itself. I found solace in every rickety hardwood floor, every drafty window, even our tiny kitchen which all of our guests somehow ended up in whenever we threw a party. My house was familiar, a place that I could always rely on to welcome me back with open arms after a long day. If I was sure about anything, it was where my home was.

Eight months after my friend and I had this conversation, I packed up my favorite books along with three suitcases full of clothes and moved into my college dorm in Manhattan's East Village, only an hour and a half train ride from my house in Westchester County. As I unpacked my things and set up my side of the room, I ran the phrase "this is temporary" through my mind, a sort of cathartic chant in the midst of a difficult change. My dorm was just going to be a place where I lived and slept during the school year, a way to save myself from a tiring commute every morning if I had continued to live with my parents. I knew that my real home was in Westchester.

Just two weeks after moving into my dorm, I was already exhausted from the city. I've always loved Manhattan, but something about the constant sound of ambulances and honking cars can quickly get under your skin. I woke up on a sweltering morning in early September, and told my roommate that I was going home for the weekend. I was longing for a home cooked meal, my own comfy bed, and most of all, the refreshing scent of the nearby Long Island Sound, just paces away from my house. When I finally stepped off the Metro North and felt the clean breeze that is so rarely found in Manhattan, I felt wonderful and relaxed, as if I had been holding my breath and could now finally come up for air. As I sat on my front porch with my mother, I turned to her and asked, "Has it always been this quiet?"

However, despite the peaceful qualities of suburbia, something felt off. While I was relaxed and happy to be away from the compressing skyscrapers of the city, I didn't get the relief that I always experienced upon coming home after being away for a long time. Since I enjoyed the comfort of my house so much, the longest time I had spent away before moving into college was only a week. Where was that feeling of solace that I was waiting for?

Starting to get antsy, I got in my car and drove around with the windows down, playing the songs of the summer through my stereo, thinking about the people I had listened to them with. I drove around my neighborhood, my friends' towns, the parking lot of the diner that we've spent so many hours in, searching for the relief of coming home. While I was thankful to be in a familiar territory where I could drive at more than 30 miles per hour, still, something was missing.

I knew where I was, but I didn't know the feeling. As I hummed along to my favorite songs and sped down my native streets, I realized that there was nothing for me in Westchester without my friends being just a 20-minute car ride away from me at any given moment. I always thought that home was within the walls of my house, but I was wrong. Even though I had the quiet escape of the suburbs, it meant nothing more to me than another place that I could get a good night's sleep in. And, as I've learned after spending several months in my dorm, sometimes I sleep better with the annoying but often comforting sound of police sirens and construction vehicles of Manhattan than I do with the cricket's lullaby outside my cracked window overlooking my grassy backyard. After my less than satisfactory first journey back to Westchester, I was left incredibly uneasy coming back to the East Village.

If I can't find the same comfort of coming home in the house I lived in for 18 years, I thought to myself, there's no way I can find it in a small room I've only inhabited for less than a month.

Now, as my first semester of college life has come to a close, I still haven't found the comforting release of coming home, whether it be to my dorm, or to my house. Maybe it's the fact that I've lived in the same place my entire life and don't tend to do well with radical changes, but I've found that no matter where I am, I can never get entirely comfortable. I can't find the consolation from coming back "home" that I so easily used to feel before I moved away from my house in Westchester. I'm lucky enough to have a place to live, somewhere that I can put my books on a shelf, and two different beds to sleep in, but I don't think I have a "home."

College can make you rethink many things. I've found that one of the most important is figuring out where you feel like you undoubtedly belong, and that the answer is often not where you had originally thought.