Faces pass as I sit in my blue cushion seat. A guy in his twenties who is already starting to grey clicks away at his keyboard on his way to work while a little blonde boy sits at the edge of his chair amazed by neighboring trains. A teenage girl sits as close to the window as she can, hugging herself as her eyes lock in the last bit of Connecticut she will see until Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving isn't that far away, she thinks, but over a month away from her family is still a new concept she's yet to be fully adjusted too.

I came home Friday morning for a long weekend and a break from the college life. I was anticipating this weekend for weeks, constantly reminding myself that I can get through college, I will get home. And I did. But it was not what I thought it would be.

I went away to college and my life in Vernon did not pause so I could press play when I got back. My sisters got taller, a lot taller, and in over a month’s time they seemed to have grown up. They were no longer the innocent baby sisters I hugged goodbye, but the mature, individual adolescents with lives of their own. Mom and Dad had both continued on, quickly getting back to their work issues and the normalcy of life instead of milking the sadness of their oldest daughter now in college. My dogs knew what life was like without me, they still got fed so that's all they cared about. I don't fault them, any of them. Life had moved forward because it had too, but I couldn't help but think that I was standing alone in my childhood home that was no longer mine, that life had moved on and I wasn't on the train everyone else was on.

The first night home, I was filled with the excitement of finally being around my family, my best friends. Then it was time for bed when everyone went to their respective rooms and followed their normal routines. I didn't have a regular routine in my house anymore, my routine was at college. Closing the beaten up door that was decorated with the colorful letters that spelt my name, I turned on the lights and took a breath. I was finally alone in what used to be my comfort zone. I was truly alone, not just on an hour run off campus or in my room without my roommate, I was in my room alone. And I couldn't have felt more scared.

I knew I wasn't staying, that I couldn't tell myself to relax you're finally over the new life and you're here for good. I wasn't staying so I convinced myself I was a guest, that I was just visiting my families lives and my childhood home that was no longer home. I didn't live there, right?

But I wasn’t visiting. I wasn’t coming back to a house that wasn’t mine. I came back to the room I used as a recording booth for my duet with Drake Bell when I was in third grade. I came back to the yard I used to build forts in with my friends. I came back to the living room where my family and I shared countless movie nights. I came back to my family. I came back to my house in my childhood neighborhood in the town I grew up in.

As I sit back in my dorm room after a weekend away, I miss my family and I miss my house. Going home gave me insight on countless things. I now know that I have the ability to thrive and push myself academically, socially, and personally in college. I recognize that my family is not moving on without me, but moving on with me. Thanks to my parents and sisters, I am lucky enough to have been given the wonderful foundation of morals, values, and beliefs that will continue to keep them with me and help me prosper. I have conquered the first time home and I will push myself to enjoy every opportunity provided to me here at college, but I certainly look forward to the welcoming embraces of my family when I arrive home again.