Let’s assume you are someone who has fond memories of home. Have you ever noticed how, even then, coming home feels strange?Thanksgiving has just gone by and I, like many others, went home. I spent seven years of my life in this town before heading off to school and every time I come back, something is different. All these boba places weren’t here before (not that I’m complaining) and they finally finished construction on that road and that weird sandwich shop isn’t there anymore. The high school I graduated from has new teachers and students that have no idea I exist. Change is so natural and yet it feels so strange when we encounter it.

It probably has to do with being away for months and coming back to a place that isn’t quite what you remember. What makes that place you are from home? If you’re away at school or you’ve moved out for some other reason, you are spending far more time there than you are in the place you came there from. What makes that place you are from “home”? All my friends that I had here have gone their own ways. The love is still there but we aren’t often in the same place at the same time anymore. My family is there, in that place I came from. They are different too. Everyone is growing and changing, my sisters have lives that I know very little about and friends that I have never met. The dog has a harder time walking now and suddenly my parents have grey hair.

Home is this alternate space, away from the weight of my life and yet not separate from life. It is both deeply familiar and strange. It seems that home is not completely bound to people but it is not completely bound to a place either. People create their own homes and yet external factors can prevent us from feeling at home. That’s all I can say about what home is at this point, it is something I feel not something I know.