Saturday, November 27, 2010

Home and the Holidays

Thanksgiving is a difficult thing to celebrate when you're unable to go home. This year was the first year that I didn't go back to my parent's house (or grandparent's house, or aunt's house) to celebrate the holiday with my whole family. Being thousands of miles away made it impossible to make the trip, and coming to that realization was difficult. Much homesickness ensued.

I've been thinking about "home" lately, and where "home" is for me nowadays. For the past four years, "home" has been a number of places: dorm rooms aplenty, an old, school-owned house, and my parent's house over summers and breaks. But now that I've graduated from college, I'm not really sure where to call home. I no longer return to my parents' every few months for movies with my mom and late nights with my brother. And I'm no longer shifting from dorm room to dorm room every few semesters. This place, this half-empty apartment, is my home. And it's strange to claim it as such.

What makes a place home? Is it your things? If so, then my home is halfway in Texas and halfway in Indiana. Is it people? Then my home is scattered across the country, even across the world. Is it where you are? Where you want to be? Is it where your heart is, like the saying says?

These days I don't really know where my heart is. I miss Indiana so much that I want to cry at times, but at the same time I'm starting to appreciate and love Texas. It isn't fair to compare the two, which I did for the first few months. I missed my friends from college, as well as family and friends from my church in Indiana. But now that I'm thinking about going "home" for Christmas, I'm wondering if I actually am going home...or just visiting an old place I used to call home.

I feel like I'm starting to call this home. I'm starting to let myself have roots here, people who I call friends and places that I say are familiar. Though the weather here is a strange, though the people often fit squarely into the cliche, though there is far too much football....I think I'm starting to like it here. Possibly even love it.