By the beginning of May, every college student who has any bit of sanity left is more than excited to go home to their families. They're excited for the home cooked meals, their own bed again, doing laundry without using quarters and most importantly... NO SHOWER SHOES. There's more than enough positives to name about moving home, but if you're anything like me, it becomes one of the last things you want to do.
For starters, its time consuming. Having to tear apart your dorm room just to pack things into small boxes and refold (or roll, because it takes up less space in your bags) all of your clothes is terrifying to you. On top of studying for finals and writing end of the semester papers, you feel like there's barely enough time in the day for you to eat and breathe never mind pack your life away.
On another note, you have to plan a carpool with your parents because maybe you brought too much stuff to fit in one car... like I did. I started moving my stuff out three weeks early because picking one day where my parents could both come up to move my stuff out was impossible, so I slowly brought stuff home as I saw them. They have lives too and jobs that are helping to pay for you to be there, so why take them away form that to help you move your stuff home?
And finally, moving home means you have to leave home. Sure, you've lived there for just the school year, and shared the room with other people, but it still became your home. You had your own bed in which the mattress cover was molded to your sleeping position in no time at all, you designed your own 12x7 wall with the best tapestry and pictures of you and your people from your hometown that you could find. You created something that started as four blank walls and transformed it into something that makes you feel comforted. You created bonds within these walls stronger than any you've made before with people that absolutely nobody can replace. You created a safe place for you and your friends to let their emotions fly. Moving home means that you have to leave all of this, all of your friends, your memories, your room, your RA's, your disgusting community bathroom that somehow you'll miss complaining about.. It's all gone after you check yourself out.
Creating a home is something that isn't easy; ask your parents, they made one hell of a home for you. But home isn't necessarily where you have been the longest or where you grew up. It lives up to the saying. Home really is where the heart is and my heart is in my freshman year dorm room because I know nothing will ever be how it was then. I will never have the same opportunities to meet the people I met and interact with them how I did because its time to move back to your hometown. No more friends banging on your door at 3:00 in the morning because they just got home from a party, no more twin XL bed that you somehow managed to love, and no more microwave right next to that bed. Moving home to me means leaving my happy place, because when you have a school as truly beautiful and full of opportunity as mine is, you fall in love. You fall in love with it only to have it end with a messy break up.
