It’s finally the time where all college students are heading home, possibly for the first time since August. As we come home we come up with all these scenarios in our head about what is going to be different, the same, and what will happen when we see all of our friends and family that we said bye to in August.
As we drive into our hometown, a million emotions hit as we see everything we grew up around: the parking lot you drove for the first time in, the pizza place you got lunch with your friends at all the time and so many more. When you pass your high school it feels as though you never left and you'll be waking up at 6:30 am the next morning to get ready.
Stepping into your house for the first time since you’ve been at college is the strangest experience. Even though it’s your house, you feel like a guest in your own home. You room may be exactly how you left it, but it just doesn't feel like your space. It even feels weird taking food.
Seeing your friends that are still in high school is also strange. While it’s great to see them it’s like you’ve been living in different worlds for the past few months. You both have so many stories to tell, but the types of stories are at different ends of the universe when a year earlier it would’ve been the same type of stories. Even though you may only be a year or two a part, you just lead completely different lives.
Seeing your best friend is one of the best parts of coming home. The moment you see them you get the biggest smile on your face and it won’t go away. There’s no one else in the room and you two just start talking as if nobody left. You’re so comfortable it’s as if you just saw each other the day before. Seeing them in person also reminds you why saying goodbye was so difficult in the first place. Getting to be with them again is an instant form of both happiness and relief. Happiness for obvious reasons and relief because you finally get the part of you you’ve been missing for so long is finally back, and you can breathe. (Kyra and Bailey, my best friends, are basically connected to me and not having them just makes me feel incomplete.)
Seeing your family brings mixed emotions. Obviously you’re happy to see them because they're your family, but every conversation feels like a broken record. “How do you like college? How are your classes? Do you like your roommate?” Three days into being home and you already have a perfectly formulated response for the questions you keep hearing over and over again. But even if you're tired of it, you keep smiling and talking like it’s the first time you’ve heard the question anyways because they do genuinely want to know, like everyone else.
Just as you feel like you’re used to being back, it’s time to leave. And the feelings never change each time you come back. However, theres not much of a better feeling than being home.
