Two weekends ago, I went home for the first time in a little more than two months. I know, I know, two months? That's nothing. You've stayed away longer. My parents have stayed away from their homes (because home is always that place you first left) for years before returning, and then only for a few short days. But hear me out.
When you first leave for college, you have done exactly that, left. While you (obviously) know that life has gone on since you left, there is not concrete evidence of this alleged progression of time. In your mind, there is just you when you were there, and then you when you were not. Simple. It's a phenomenon not unlike Schrodinger's famous cat. If you put a cat in a box and close it, you know the cat is in the box. But you also don't know. Who knows what is happening in the privacy of that box? You certainly don't.
Going home complicates this simplistic, albeit convenient view of life. Because now, the evidence is incontrovertible. The new covers on the ottomans, the beautiful white curtains by the door, the freshly power washed deck, even the dog has softer fur. What happened in those two months? Your family can explain, and you can understand, but the fact remains the same. You cannot know what happened in the time you were not there. You were at college, living life, looking forward, blissfully ignorant of the fact that when time progresses at your college campus, it progresses in your suburban hometown as well.
Of course, you knew this. But you knew it as one knows the North Star in the horizon, clearly present, but too far to really consider. Now, you know it as you know the freckles on your face, ostensibly, obscenely obvious. And sure, you know it as you know a hug from your mom too, but the familiarity with which you recognize this fact is a novelty. And that is unquestionably uncomfortable.
It is this, this novelty of old familiarities, the newness of returning home a stranger, that befuddles the average college student. Perhaps this strange, limbic existence is what drives or at least contributes to the infamous sophomore slump. Forced to return to the familiar unfamiliarity of college, forced to regard one's own home with a healthy dose of strangeness once more. Who knows? The cat is in the box. Isn't it?
