Home is where...

Up until I left for college, the only home I had ever known was this small, 2 bedroom, 1 bath house that I grew up in. Across the street, in a two-story house with no central air conditioning lived my grandparents. Next to them, on a huge lawn, lived my three great aunts, and next to them lived my aunt and my cousins.

Sure, the neighborhood I grew up in was a little...scary, but I had the security of family all around me. My aunt and uncle even owned the little house next to ours, which they rented out or stayed in when they visited (which is where their son, my cousin, is currently staying).

That was my life, in the small little subtown of Flour Bluff in Corpus Christi. Fifteen minutes from wonderful beach, five minutes from my school, a short walk from the water of the Laguna Madre. The sunrises were gorgeous, and the night sky had endless stars.

Corpus and this little house I'm in right now was the only home I had ever known. I remember thinking in HS that I needed to get out of here...that I needed something bigger than this laid back city...so I went to a college 4 hours away in Austin.

The fall of 1999 marked a new beginning for me. In the next 6 years that followed, I packed and unpacked all of my belongings over 14 times, and I lived in almost 8 different places, from dorms, to converted study lounges, to apartments (and even a brief stint back home). I have had over 15 roommates (3 of which were family members).

I have become no stranger to pulling up my roots and moving, mostly because I have had no choice. I have been at UFA for over 2 years, and that's the longest I've been anywhere since I first moved into Kinsolving in August of '99.

I've learned how to adapt to different places quickly, and the term "home" has come to mean, very simply, the place that I am sleeping at. There's more to it, of course, but I've discovered that if I'm staying any place for more than a night or two, I will generally refer to it as "home" when I'm out. "Are we going home now? ...I mean, are we going back to [fill in the blank]'s place?"

It's so simple for me now. Home is wherever I need it to be, wherever I have a chance to become comfortable. Those are just the passing "homes," though...but even ignoring those transient homes, I still have two places that I easily refer to as Home. Corpus, of course...my hometown, and Houston (for now).

When I'm in Houston, I talk about going Home, to Corpus....and when I'm in Corpus, Houston is the Home to which I inevitably need to return.

That's just the way things are...and I know I'm not the only one who has called two places home simultaneously. It's just...well, I've been thinking about "home" and where it is a lot lately. It seems everyone in my family expects me to "come home" when my lease is up in August. More than once it has been said, "When you come back..."

I have told them all, again and again, returning to Corpus is a last resort for me. If I cannot find anything, then yes, I will drag myself back to the city I have always loved, but...live at home? No. It's impossible. How? How could I possibly live here again? I can barely survive a month within these walls, and that's even having the knowledge that it's only a "visit"...how could I possibly live in the living room for longer than that? How can they expect that of me?

There is no "going home" for me...not back here to Corpus. Yes, this is my home, and it will always be Home to me, but it's not where I belong. It hurts me to think about that, but there is no life for me here, at least I don't think there is one. I've lived away from here for too long. There is no going back for me.

Ignoring the fact that there would be no place for just my stuff, and the impracticality of me living in the living room, everything here is different. It's not My Home any more. It's called change....living here could never be what it once was.

Everything is different. I am different.

Where is My Home going to be when September gets here?