Away From Lincoln Land

Beware the ramblings to come. This is what real, naked, heart-felt blogs are made of, but without the poetic language of master blogger 1 and master blogger 2.

It's been a long couple of days, but I'm finally home.

Coming home was somewhat unanticipated for me. Not unanticipated as in unexpected, but unanticipated as in I was too busy to really realize that I was coming home. I walked through the door and was surprised to be where I was. The familiarity of home is a conflicting feeling for me. I'm glad to be home. But the next month could be a long and lonely one. I have great plans for my time at home, but I'm already missing Lincoln, just a little bit.

I'll probably get over it. I usually do. I'll be glad to be back at Union in the fall, but it's likely that by tomorrow, I'll be fully present in my Pennsylvanian life again.

It just feels so odd to me that this morning my home was a dorm room in Lincoln, and now that particular room will never again be home to me. Now I am fully existing here, whereas my life was entirely at school only hours ago. I feel like a turtle. I've picked up my home and carried it on my back and now I've set it down again.

And I love Pennsylvania, and being home, and my family, and my dog, and all the other wonderful things that come with being here. I went to the garage and loved on my bike for a moment, played with Rufus, and laughed at the familiarity of seeing my dad on the couch watching the Hallmark channel. It is good to be home. But I also went to my room, the one in which I spent a good deal of my growing up, the one in which I've laughed with Keri countless times and in which I've gotten ready for school and banquets and graduating and going off to college. A room holds memories and it can tell you a lot about a person. And I realized that my room here in Mohrsville, Pennsylvania is no longer who I am. The memories it contains are outdated. They're shadowed over by even better, more recent ones that took place far from here. I haven't really lived at home for three years now. I am a different person from the girl who left only 36 months ago. My interests, hobbies, tastes, and habits have changed. For the most part, I like the changes.

It is true that home isn't really a place. If it's where the heart is, as they say, then I'm a little sad that this must mean that mine is not here. If it's where the people you love are, it should at least be partly here. Perhaps this is why I'm feeling homeless today. The people I love are scattered from California to Massachusetts and everywhere in between. There are some in Lincoln and some in Tennessee and some in New York and some in Michigan and probably some that I don't know quite where they are.

Tomorrow I'm going to rectify my homelessness by making my room mine again. My mom and sister have pretty well moved in. The drawers I emptied over spring break in preparation for the unpacking I knew I'd need to do tonight are now full of their things. My closet is not my own. I'm a little bitter. There will be much removal of all things that do not belong to me. There will be cleaning and throwing away of things that are no longer of importance. And there will be music played (and lots of it) to accompany this long process.

Perhaps I'll find something to blog about.

PS: This is my first attempt at e-mailing my blog to blogger instead of posting conventionally. I hope it works. Blogger hasn't been treating me well lately with font choosing and such (anyone else experiencing these issues?!) so I figure it can't get much worse. We'll see.