Home has always been a pretty concrete concept for me. Home is where my parents and sisters are. Home is where my puppies are. Home is where my best friends live down the street from me. Home is where I grew up.
That being said, I always knew that home is where the heart is. My heart has always been back at my house. Still to this day I walk in and breathe a sigh of relief. I’m washed over with familiarity. The sounds of my sisters bickering, my mom cooking, the chickens clucking. It is all so comforting. It’s what I know best.
That concrete concept of home went out the door when I went off to UGA though. I no longer get to come home to my sisters lounging around; I come home to an empty dorm room. I no longer get home cooked meals every night; I get dining hall food. I don’t eat dinner with my family everyday while telling them about my day; I call my parents whenever I get a break in my busy schedule. If I focus on what part of my home I’ve lost, I get sad. I’m can never go back to my concrete concept of home that I’ve known for the past 18 years.
After a year at college, my concept of home is much more fluid. It’s anything comforting I can grasp onto. Home for me now is the friends I’ve turned into my family. Home now is coming home and laying down on the floor next to my roommate who is on the futon. Home now is my best friend groupchat that never dies. Home now is the familiar walk to my boyfriend’s dorm. Home now is the late nights that I spend studying with my friends and the late nights my friends and I don’t spend studying. Home now is going over to my sister’s apartment to make a dinner that we’ve been eating once a week for our entire lives. Home for me now is making plans to meet up with my college friends over the summer because we can’t go three months without seeing our family.
It took a year away from my house for me to realize what the saying home is where the heart is actually means, and that your heart can be in multiple places at once. My home is wherever my heart is comforted whether that’s at my childhood home or my friend’s dorm room in Athens or on the phone with my sister.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’m simultaneously homesick for my home but dreading leaving Athens. It’s weird because I refer to my house as my home when I’m in Athens but when I’m at my house I say “I’m on my way home” when I text my friends that I’m headed back to Athens. The heart is a fickle thing and I think that part of growing up is realizing that your home is wherever you make it to be. I have multiple homes now. Even if I want to go back to my concrete idea of home, I don’t think I ever can or should. I think my home will always be where I’m surrounded by my family whether that is my UGA best friends or my friends I left back in my hometown or my actually family.
Photo by Rowan Heuvel on Unsplash.