Home

I went home last weekend. Want to know something they don't tell you when filling out college applications and getting ready to run wild on your own journey? You are going to miss home. Maybe not right at the beginning. Maybe not even until you are out of school and on your own. But one day, you will miss home. 

You will miss the smells. Every house has one. You will miss your parents. They really do get greater in time. Or maybe you get a little wiser and realize how great they have always been. Shoot, I even missed the horrible Austin traffic. Listen people... there is no way you are getting to work by 9 (or even noon) if you leave at 8. Austin has gotten so packed! But I miss it none the less.

I miss my old hang outs. I miss knowing things were secure. I could mess up and someone would be there to help me. Or better yet, someone would be there to take blame with me. 

Home is such a wonderful place and I took advantage of it for so long. 

We all do though. That is the point of home. It is where no one can judge you. And when they do it is all in good fun. Home is where your family is. It is where your first friends were made. Where your grandparents go to rest. Home is the place you can't change, and you shouldn't want too. 

As I travel further away from my home I see more and more how wonderful it is. Knowing you can't just go home, pick up for the weekend because that math test was hard. Or decide you don't want to spend fall break drinking so you jump on the next flight your parents bought you. When you can't go home you want to go home even more. 

It wasn't clear how much I truly missed home until this time. Grasping for every last second I realized there was nothing I could do. I am now on the journey of making my own home. But in my own home my mom doesn't fold all my clothes for me. Or search Whole Foods high and low for those vegan brownies. My grandparents don't slip me money as I walk out the door. And I don't get to sit on their couch listening to them debate politics. When you make your own home it isn't filled with your fathers loud voice, or your sisters crazy antics. Your own home is different because it is yours. 

But I don't want my own home. I want to go back to the old one. I want to lay on my couch when I'm sick with the softest pillow in the house. We know it is the softest because we tested them all. And I want to be told I'm staying out too late. I love that my mom will be sitting up waiting for me when I get home from that party. 

So there I was, an hour into a 30 minutes drive to the airport and I was freaking out. Mainly because I don't like being late. And showing up to the airport an our and 30 minutes before a flight is late by my standards. But also because I knew I would make it. And most of me didn't want too. I didn't want to leave. The more times I leave home the longer it will be before I'm back again. 

And I just really miss home.