Home

When I was a child my parents, older sister and I lived in Concord, North Carolina, in a small, one story home that was separated from a field by a small creek. My sister and I would spend all of our summers, and most of the school year, out in the field.

One time, in the forest that lined the far side of the field, we found planks of wood which we used to make our own bridges over the creek. Mine washed away in a storm, but my sister's was still standing when the moving truck came and took our belongings.

I chose a college in North Carolina that was only an hour and a half's drive form that home. Before I was accepted to the college my mother and I came to visit the campus and also to visit the town we had left nine years earlier.

I am not sure what I expected to feel, or find, when we returned to the old home. Saying that I was not happy living in Seattle would be a complete understatement. I have never been a social person and I found it hard to make friends in our new city. I was lonely and, as time when on, I became depressed. In this state of mind I had turned my childhood into a fairytale and blamed my parents for taking me away from it. For this, I refused to ever consider my parent's house my home.

On the plane, flying to visit the college, I built up the whole experience as a long awaited homecoming, simular to the ones they have in books, with trumpets and such nonsense. My arrival, however, was not that climatic. In real life the house, creek and field did not have the magic I believed they had. Standing there I saw it for the first time for what it really was, a place. The fairytale was shattered, but only partly, it would take a summer working retail in Seattle for the dream to be completely shattered.

Currently I am back in college. When I first came here it was to escape from Seattle. That was what I needed then, and it served its purpose well, but now I need something more. Refusing to make Seattle a home while I lived there was just stupid and the only person it hurt was myself. Now though I think I understand what I was feeling, and I think I am ready to start making myself a home.