As I prepared to drive home from school for break, there was one song playing on repeat in my head.
"Country roads take me home to the place I belong."
The idea of going home is so romanticized for me by the perfect pairing with that song. But as I hopped in the car with my dad and stared out the window for much of the drive home, I felt…strange.
When I first left for school I could feel that road representing my whole life being left behind to start anew, but on the way back, things were different. I was expecting that road to signify a welcome return to my old life, and while it did just that, it also represented something else for me.
It was a return, yet a departure. A dive back into my old life, but a swift exit from my new one.
How do I be in one place and not miss the other?
How can my hearts live in two places at once?
It is hard to feel as if I am not living a double life. It is hard to marry my dual experiences into one. While I am sure that time back and forth from college to home will help reunite the two halves of my heart, I have not quite figured it out yet.
I am not desperate to find the answer, though, because I love both places separately and simultaneously, and maybe that is all it is ever going to be. But I do know that the drive from home to school and vice versa means a whole lot more to me now after my first semester.
By the time my four years are over, I will know that drive like the back of my hand. I will know each curve on the road and each tree on the side of the street. And in the same way, I will know it by heart, it will know me. It is the road that connects the two halves of my heart—it is the very vein of my being. While I don't know how to make peace with my dual-mindedness, I know I am at peace when I drive that road. Whichever direction I am going on it, I am going home to my heart, and that makes it so special.
I love my country road. Whichever lane I'm taking, I'm heading in the right direction—to the place I belong.
