Less than one week ago, I completed my first year of college. I'm not going to say it feels like "just yesterday I moved into my dorm room," because honestly, this year could not have moved by any slower. I'm relieved to be done, and like most students, I was excited to go back home. But then I remembered something, and that something is kind of a big deal.

My family moved.

A week ago.

So, as you can imagine, I packed up my dorm room in bags and boxes galore, piled them into my dad's car, and unloaded them into a house full of more bags and boxes galore. If I didn't know my family first-hand, I'd think we were either A- hoarders or B- just really lazy and messy. I maneuvered through the obstacle course of my new home and put down my belongings in a room I'd never been in before. I was told this strange area was now "my room." It's an unsettling feeling to go home to a place you've never known. It's especially strange to go from one impermanent dorm room to another impermanent house for the summer, and then to another impermanent house in August for the next school year.

All this thinking about moving in the next year got me to realize how important having somewhere to call "home" truly is. Home is more than just a place you sleep in. Home provides comfort, stability, and reassurance. Even though I can hear my mom on the phone through these paper-thin walls telling her friends that we're "settled in," I feel like we're lying to ourselves. l mean, I still have to search for the cutting boards and have no idea where my jewelry box disappeared to. I still wake up in the middle of the night in the pitch-black darkness and reach to the left where my nightstand was at my old house. After realizing it isn't there, I get out of bed and walk straight into the wall because there never was a wall right there in my room before.

I can't imagine the lives of people who hop from one country to the next exploring and staying in hotel rooms each night. It must be beautiful, exciting, and extraordinary, but I need a home. I need a place I can be in for years, where I'd be able to walk around with my eyes closed and know which stair squeaks and where my cats' food always is. This instability of moving from one place to the next over and over again leaves you with an odd feeling of not knowing your place. It leaves you craving a sense of comfortability and peace, especially when you wake up in the morning not realizing where you are.

This house isn't a home yet, and I'm not sure if it ever will be considering my family is moving again in one year. Maybe the next one will be ore promising.