I've been moving a lot recently, as in, a whole lot. I moved out of my dorm room and in with family for a few weeks, then into a summer sublease. In a month and a half, I'll move into an apartment. And on top of all that, my entire family is moving homes. Yes, you read that right: over the course of just two or three short months, I will have moved not once or twice, or even three times, but five times. Yes, I am moving five times back to back to back to back. I'll be the first to admit that it's more than a little crazy, and of course, we didn't plan it this way, but here we are. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little scared.

It's one thing to move around a lot at school, only because that's to be expected. Still, I can fully recognize that moving for school around four times in three months is a bit of a stretch to be considered expected, and when it comes down to it, it's a little scary, and more so than that, it's stressful. All of my stuff is currently strewn all over the Triangle, from being at my sublease to being with family, and that thought alone is more than enough to stress out someone like me.

However, I think that I could easily move past a lot of moving and confusion over where my stuff is at school, as long as I know that I can come back home to the house I've lived in for 18 years, or really just as long as I can remember. Except, that's not quite the case because, you guessed it, my family is moving. Once again, of course, they didn't plan it this way, they've been looking at buying a new home, a nicer and bigger home for them to grow old in, for a while, and it only happened to have fallen around this time.

I'm a very sentimental person, and given how long I've lived in this house, this move is scary for me. It's intimidating, stressful and sad because I love this home, this place where I grew up. However, I do love the new home we're moving into, and yet, a part of me can't get over the fact that we're leaving this place. I think it's worse because it's being coupled with all of the other moving I've done recently.

If I let my emotions take over, it's easy for me to get stuck on the fact that my stuff is going to be everywhere. It's easy for me to get scared because moving is scary. It's easy to think that I don't have any home anymore because my home has consisted of about five different places over the past few months. I think it's easy for anyone to get stuck in these feelings. These feelings and sentiments that moving homes can bring, however, I think it's even easier to move past them, as long as you're thinking ahead, thinking of the bigger picture.

Moving is scary, but moving is also a step forward. All of my moving to school is just another step forward in life. It's a milestone. It's a representation of all that I have done and all that I am going to do when I think about the things that it encompasses, and I think that's an attitude everyone should have when they're packing up and moving all of their things all over the world. For my parents, moving homes is a step forward in their lives, and I'm excited for them. I'm excited to come back home to a new home that I can decorate and love as much as I loved the one I grew up in, and I think that's another attitude that everyone should have when they're moving in this fashion, too.

For me, the thing that I think really helps with all of the scary thoughts and feelings that surround packing up and moving is something that my mom has made sure to remind me of over and over again:

Home isn't a place, home is the people and things that surround where you are. So no matter where you move, you're always going to have a home.