Home

Hello, all!

So, I know it's after midnight so it's TECHNICALLY September 3rd, but so far as I'm concerned, it's still the 2nd so this is still a daily post.

I'm back home, in my even-more-empty-and-echo-y room, and I can't help but feel a bit disconnected. This is home... my room and my bed (though it now looks freakishly small after dorm beds), my house, my car. This is my town, the place I've lived for the last eight years, but part of me doesn't recognize this as "home" anymore.

Home is in the mountains, in my little dorm room with few decorations and far too much window, where the sun wakes me up cheerily every day by shining directly in my face. Where I spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly with these friends that are already like family, and where we spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing.

The thing is, a couple of them are here for the weekend. One of them lives in town, and the other is living in my house for the weekend so that she isn't alone on campus. They're my new home, these friends, and here they are, lurking in the home I've known for years. It's a strange disconnect and a strange sense of displacement. Our friendship is almost defined by the where-- the Botanical Gardens (the Botans), the Ridges, and even the mountains themselves-- but here, far away from mountains and far less shady, our friendship remains the same sort of comfortable companionship that makes it seem like I have known them for much longer than the time I have.

Driving around my town tonight, music blaring and banter flowing freely as it always does, it strikes me that home is never a set place. Home is everywhere that you find a place to be, where you are comfortable with yourself and your surroundings. And seeing home as a sort-of-stranger only seems to make it more magical, because it is not the physical place that matters, but how you see the place.

A demain!
-Aly