When you walked across the stage and accepted your high school diploma, you took your first step towards adulthood. When you accepted your diploma, you ended a chapter of your life, flipped the page, and began a new chapter. When you walked out of graduation after it was finished, with "Pomps and Circumstance" playing in the background, you were leaving your old life behind and preparing for the coming months leading up to college.
Flash forward a few months and you're happier than ever. You're in the midst of "the best four years of your life," eating what you want and when you want, making huge life decisions on your own, going to parties, cheering on your school's sports teams, and just being a carefree college student. While all this is happening, sometimes you sacrifice visiting home. If it's been a while since you've been home, your first time back can be a surreal experience. Everything feels different, looks different, and just feels a lot smaller. You think to yourself, "So this is where I grew up? This is where I had my first kiss, got my first job, laughed with my friends until I cried. This was where I graduated high school. This was where I packed up my life and left for a new life awaiting me. This was home."
Going home for the first time in a while can make you question where home actually is. Is it where you grew up for the past 18 years of your life (for most people) or is it your college campus, the place that starts to feel like home? When you go home for the first time in a while, one of your first desires may be to visit your "old" high school.
Once you decide upon this idea, it may be the first time you have been back since you graduated, and this brings back so many of your favorite memories. Visiting your old high school makes you feel very nostalgic and can even make you feel very old. It can be hard to believe that you only graduated from there a few months or years before and used to be a student there. It's weird to think that you used to sit in those small classrooms compared to the 300 seat lecture hall you sit in today. It's hard to imagine sitting in the 2,000 seat football stadium compared to the 80,000 seat football stadium you cheer in today. It's crazy to think this used to be your life.
Going home for the first time can make you question where home is. It throws you off when you ask someone to take you "home" after the basketball game, when home is actually an hour and a half away.
Home can be where you feel happiest. It can be where your family is. It can be where you spent the first 18 years of your life leading up to college. Home can also be your college campus. It can be the place you accidentally call home sometimes. It can be the place you reside in most of the time.
Going home for the first time in a while can be a surreal experience. You might feel lost and confused. Everything might feel and look different and you might start to question where home is. It's okay if you feel this way because we will all have this feeling at some point in time. This feeling is supposed to happen because it is a side effect of your official transition from childhood to adulthood. Your perception of home will probably change a few times throughout your life. Do not feel as if you are betraying the place you grew up, the place that was once your only home; you are lucky because now you have a few places to call home instead of just one.
