Home Is Wherever I'm With You

   It's been a while.

I'm sitting in a Barnes & Noble cafe back in my hometown. I'm watching everyone around me.  I don't know anyone at all.  Everyone is lost in their reading, their eating, their talking.  Coasting along comfortably. I should be comfortable here too, right?

It's nice to be home, but I don't feel completely home.  I feel like a stranger sometimes, like right now.  Like I don't really belong here anymore. I'm home because my parents are here, or they were.  My mom jetted off to Indiana for the summer to take care of my grandma.  She's awaiting a possible diagnosis of colorectal cancer. She's already had breast cancer.  It's all quite messy business.  But my dad is still here, so I'm here for a while.  

I'll be heading back to Harrisonburg in about a week.  It will be good to be busy again.  Maybe that's more of home now.  
It's an awkward in between phase of life.  I don't feel like I fully belong in one place or the other.  I just jump back and forth every few months.  Spending all my time in my hometown is strange, but spending all my time in Harrisonburg is jut as strange.  So I jump back and forth.  

Last week Mary Blake and I went to an Imagine Dragons concert in Raleigh.  It was absolutely amazing, they're one of my favorite bands.  During the trip I realized something.  I love moving around.  I love jumping around (literally and figuratively).  I get bored when I stay in one place doing the same thing for too long.  I loved exploring the city, finding little places to eat, visiting the arboretum and art museum.  I was content to be unsettled.  

I feel like I'm not like most people.  But I also feel like most people say that kind of thing.

Most people want to settle down.  Get married. Start a family.  Have a steady job.  Make money.  Buy a house.  Stay in one place.  This past Sunday was Mother's Day.  I'm not going to hate on Mother's Day (ok, maybe only a little).  I appreciate and love my mother without a doubt.  But I think this day makes many women feel uncomfortable, inadequate, like society doesn't recognize single driven women until they have a kid.  I mean, they don't have a Happy Day For Women Who Chose A Different Path Than The Herd.  Mothers are wonderful, don't get me wrong, it's just something that made me think.  Even a woman at church gave out gifts to all the women in church, whether they were mothers or not, because "if you're not a mother now, you will be someday." Well...maybe not...

But back to my point.  I just feel so strange sometimes.  Like I really don't belong in this society because I don't want to fit its mold.  

I want to travel. Fly. Dream. Explore. Discover. Work. Love. Fall in love. With places & people. Move around. Never settling.  It's like that Sugarland song "I ain't settlin' for anythin' less than everything." That's what I want my life to be like.  And it's weird to be home and feel like that.  

I'm realizing more and more I don't need to be in my hometown to feel at home.  I feel at home when my parents come visit me at school and spend time with me. When I see old friends.  When I go to concerts in strange cities.  When I'm at JMU.  Even when I'm just by myself, I feel like I'm at home because I have so many wonderful memories.  

I won't be in my hometown most of the summer. But I think I'll still be at home.  

The inspiration for this blog title, and the theme of my summer:
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Home


Home, let me come home, home is wherever I'm with you.