I finally understand what it means to feel homesick. Pretty ironic considering the fact that, like the rest of the world, I’ve been nowhere but home for over a month. Confined in the same four walls with my parents, in the place I was supposed to be missing most of my first year away at college. Oh, how the tables have turned. Sure, I missed my mom’s food and my own comfy bed while I was at school, but I never felt the longing I feel now to be back in Tampa; getting splinters from setting up my hammock (and making my roommate spend an hour getting them out while I screamed and cried like a baby), sitting in the suffocatingly small rooms in Plant Hall, and waiting in an insanely long line for an egg bowl. I feel homesick for all the dull, mundane moments, the fleeting in-between moments that came and went unnoticed, and the unforgettable moments that have changed and shaped the truest version of myself that I am now becoming. And I’ve got to say, I owe this change to the people I’ve met at UT.
So I’ve always understood the whole cheesy “home is where the heart is” saying, as in home isn’t a physical place, but rather a feeling, I think everyone understands that to a certain degree. But I’m realizing now, through sitting alone with my thoughts, feelings, and memories, that my “homey” feeling does not stem from exactly where I thought it did. This is not to minimize the love I have for my family, they are my home as well, but at this point in my life I feel the most at home laying on the floor with my friends laughing at everything and nothing all at once. I am itching to get back to that, to get back to a place and to people where I no longer need to make myself smaller in order to belong. Tampa, I’ll be back home before you know it baby.