Well, that was one hell of a semester. I'm sitting at my desk now with one final left to go, a couple boxes around me, a nearly-full trash can and recycling bin, and dishes to do, and it's gotten me thinking.
College is a weird point in a life to try to define "home." We're caught between the home we knew as children and the one that we've found at school, in theory as adults, though in a lot of ways we still feel like children. It's an exciting and transitional time in a life as you stretch the apron strings before leaping into the real world.
My house has one more person than it does bedrooms, so two of my siblings have to bunk when I come home. To let them have their own rooms, all of my belongings were packed up and they are now split among storage in my old closet/the eaves, my grandmother's house, and what I have here at my dorm. So all of the belongings that I live with at the moment can all fit into the back of a car. I've felt more and more like my dorm, my school with my friends, is my home more so than the place with my family that I only live three or four months of the year at.
Now this is no slight to my family - I love them to death. My dad said as I was coming home from my first year that I will never really be at home with them again - in a sense, I will always be only a visitor in their house. And I've found it to be somewhat true. I've grown during my time here, become more independent, closer to the adult I hope to be. And part of that meant getting out from under my parents' wings, which makes it hard to go back and live with them again.
But it's also hard to define college as a home when you have to pack up and leave at the end of every year. It's strange to see my life packed away into boxes. Next year I'll be in a different dorm, so this feels even more like an ending than last year. I also part from my boyfriend of seven months, who lives at the opposite end of the state. It's hard to leave this and go back to my family.
My mom told me that her ideal has always been for all of her possessions to fit into boxes in the back of a car, and she envies me this mobility. (Her dreams were dashed when my parents bought their first piece of furniture, a couch.) I'm not big on traveling though. I like to have a home, a niche, a place to put my instruments, a pillow to lay my head on at night.
A lot of this hinges on how you define home. Some people think it's a house with a family, others say that it's wherever you are. (As Captain Hammer points out, "But home is where the heart is, so your real home's in your chest.") My dad said that for him home was where his records were, making his home as mobile as he was between college and home. I realize whenever I pack that I have a lot of things, which go along with my lots of interests. Home is where my instruments, yarn, laptop, iPod is. But then again, home is people too, which is part of why my heart is torn. I leave my friends to go to my family, and then I leave my family to go to my friends. I saw a quote once that college is when you leave family to live with total strangers, and then you do the same thing again at the end of the year.
So home for me remains a very nebulously defined thing. It's where I lay my head, where my possessions are, where the people I love are. So for the next couple years, I think I will remain torn. A piece of my heart will always remain with my family, and I will always be welcome there. But part of me can't wait to start a life - and a home - of my own, though I have a few more years before I have to worry about that one.
