I'm back at school now. And it's winter here. Like actual snow-on-the-ground winter. Which is cool cause it is not really winter in California. More like our rainy season... and it isn't even raining again until February. So it's nice. It's nice to have winter again.
It's nice to see all my friends again, especially because I haven't seen most of them in a while. It's nice to be going back to something familiar that has been home for me for the last three and a half years. Even when I've been away, it's a place I called home, and felt connected to. Something I knew I could always come back to.
Now that I'm back, it's not the way I left it. Which I expected.
But it doesn't feel the way I expected either. Which is... interesting.
I couldn't put my finger on it, but I've realized things were different. My classes will be different (I'm a senior now, and I will have senior classes, rather than the junior classes I left taking...), my living situation will be different, my job is different, the school is different, even my friends are different.
Not that I have different friends, but of course I do have new ones, it is that the people I have been close with have changed themselves. They've had months to change, more than a year really. I don't think anyone is a completely different person, we aren't in the part of our lives where we can change so drastically in such a (relatively) short period of time. It's like when aunts and uncles say you've grown so much, but you don't notice it because you see yourself everyday and it's not like you change overnight. I feel like the Aunt. There were little things that changed and shaped my friends over the time I was gone. And now that I'm back I see what they've added up to. They're all better people for it.
Just because my friends are different doesn't mean I love them any less. It's just different. The habits and rhythms we had when I left are gone, but the people I love are still here, and new things can be made; new habits, new rhythms, new traditions even.
The thing that throws me the most is that I am different too. In this case, I'm the kid. I bet my friends see that I've changed, maybe they haven't noticed how yet, but I think they see it. On the other hand, I don't.
Or didn't. Not until I start thinking about who I was when I left here for London more than a year ago.
Like how I wanted my life to be... I wanted to move to Los Angeles and write and make movies there. But now that I've done that a bit, I realized I want to write more than anything, but not there. I didn't know how much I loved London, and especially how it would hold a place in my heart, presumably forever. I didn't know how hard it would be to be away. And I really didn't know how easy it was to be gone. I know that sounds strange, but what I've noticed most about coming back is that this place doesn't feel like home anymore. I know it will always hold an incredible significance for me, but I've spent a large portion of being away worrying about what happens when I graduate, that I'll be leaving home and venturing into the unknown, the "not-home."
But now that I'm back and it doesn't feel like that, it gives me a little hope. Hope that I might not be venturing into the not-home, maybe I'm just searching for the next one.
And what I learned most about being away is that home is not one place, but anyplace.
Also that my friends love me no matter where I am.
Thanks for reading!
Check out next week - a drawing about going home, and finding home.
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