Home Sweet Huh?
Posted by Nicole Sharp on 01 August 2005 at 22:56"I'm catching a flight to North Carolina tomorrow to visit my family. I'll be gone for a week." I've said that a few times today, always with the inevitable reply: "Going home for a week, then?" Um, not exactly.
When I came to Case as a freshman, my family was situated in Michigan, just outside of Detroit. It was a sizeable drive (three to four hours) between me and them, but it wasn't enough to prevent spending long weekends at home or even dragging a friend back with me every once in awhile. Sophomore year rolled around, and so did the moving truck. Midway through my third semester, my family relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, and I found myself booking a flight to a state I'd never been to for Thanksgiving break.
There's really no feeling quite as bizarre as walking into a house fully furnished with your furniture and having to ask where your room is.
The latest move, to a little place near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has removed that burden from my shoulders. There is no bedroom for me (by joint decision between my parents and myself, I might add). But as logical as it might have been to say, "Hey, don't bother getting a room for me and my stuff," it's a lot more difficult to come to terms with that emotionally. I never felt that I belonged in Georgia--I spent perhaps eight weeks there over the course of a year-and-a-half--but at least I had a place I could call my own in it. I didn't set up my room there, true, but it was mine nonetheless, from the IB diploma on the wall to the little Dutch canal houses on the shelf.
I'll be staying someplace in the basement during my trip to North Carolina. The guest bedroom is being reserved for relatives who will be visiting next weekend. I expect this trip to be somewhat Twilight-Zonish; I've known for a long time that there's no going back to the way things once were, but now that I'm standing here, it seems like a huge step. At nearly twenty, I'm poised on a ledge where I cannot deny that adulthood is staring me in the face. I felt like I've matured a lot this past year, but I still don't know that I feel quite ready for this one.
Despite my misgivings, I feel sorrier for my little sister. She's pretty much been an only child the last three years, but, all the same, she did not take the news that I wouldn't have a bedroom in the new house well. Yesterday she told me she had a fight with Mom when she heard that I wouldn't be staying in the guest bedroom at all. Guess I should feel loved, right?
This week will be interesting, to say the least.