They say home is where the heart is, but what if your heart is in more then one place? Moving around is just another part of life as you get older. You move out of your family home to go to college, or you get your first apartment, and it is hard to tell where your heart truly lies. You may find yourself thinking where is my home now? Others automatically have the sense of where there home now is, but home doesn't have to be just one place.
Home will always be the place that, I was born and raised. No matter how far away life takes me, a piece of my heart will always remain loyal to that place. There are too many memories and too much time invested there to not consider it home anymore. I will forever be grateful for the sense of safety and love that I was provided and it will remain forever attached by some small thread.
No matter what happens to the house that I grew up in, it will always be the home I associate with growing up and living with my family. It is the home that first taught me what a home was supposed to feel like and the home that will always be thought about when looking for future homes. For awhile it was the only home that I knew, and I didn't take as much advantage of it as I should have.
When I moved away to college, I had no idea that soon I would find another place that felt like home. At first I considered school just a home away from home. Then I realized it was more then that. It was a place I felt just as much at home as when I was actually home. It was a different kind of home, but it was the kind that I needed. It was a place where I could be myself and grow without being confined to the walls of the house that I grew up in.
As the weeks went on, I started to form another second family, consisting of friends, roommates and teammates, and my new home was now complete. I had the same support system in my friends and roommates that I did back home, and I had the same sense of safety and love.
I realized that it is okay to not miss home as much as you think you should, and it is okay to develop new places that feel like home. A piece of my heart will always remain in the house that I grew up in, no matter where I go next. Some day I hope to make a home of my own, where I will be able to continue to grow and admire the small but important things in life. For now a piece of my heart is happy and content in the dorm room that I share with some of my second family.
