August slipped away like a moment in time, and the 2023-2024 school year is coming to a close. With January’s New Year’s resolutions faded from view, February’s broken hearts long healed, and spring having successfully marched towards April, it’s time to pack up and go home. But be that as it may, some of us have less packing to do than we do unpacking. Emotional unpacking, to be precise. At least, that’s very much true for me.
Now, make no mistake — as an out-of-state scholar, I have a lot of packing to do. Even as I write this, I am shocked by the accumulation of knick knacks and paraphernalia that have cluttered my room over the past two semesters. Despite my resolution to not hoard useless stuff, my desk is absolutely covered with novelty sunglasses, newspaper clippings, cheerleader pompoms, origami cranes, parking tickets (if you know, you know), TCU cups, notecards, sample perfume bottles, and (oddly enough) balloon animals in various stages of deflation. My closet is also a mess, overstuffed with school spirit t-shirts and thrifted winter coats, and my dresser is the physical embodiment of the word “junk drawer.”
Needless to say, I will be packing for quite some time. For now, though, I wanted to take a moment to self-reflect on the past two semesters and the change they have brought into my life, so that when I do finally pack up my things and head to the airport, I will be both physically and emotionally prepared to return home.
Because going home isn’t going to be as easy as it once sounded.
For one, the meaning of the word “home” has changed significantly for me over the past few years. When I was homeschooled during the first 13 years of my life, my home felt like my entire world. Then, when I transferred to The King’s Academy for middle and high school, I found a second home in my friends and teachers at school. During my senior year of high school, I connected with Calvary Church, and grew to know the meaning of the term “church home.” By that point in my life, I had never felt more loved or supported. At long last, I’d built up a community, one in which I felt like I belonged and could be my most authentic self. As a child of divorce, that level of stability and mental wellness felt nearly utopian.
As a result, moving to Texas to start my freshman year of college was very daunting. I had a hard time believing that I could build back up in a year the very same community that had taken me eighteen years to create. Still, I decided to give college my all and resolved to try my best to make TCU yet another new home.
In many ways, I accomplished exactly that. I joined multiple clubs, went to various churches, and tasted the local cuisine. I kept my grades up and was excited to find that I had made the honor roll my fall semester. I had friends in abundance and made sure to call my siblings regularly to keep up their lives and update them on mine. And for a while, TCU did feel like home. Until it didn’t. Because, simply put, it was never supposed to be.
College is a launching pad. It’s a time and place to figure out who you are and where you’re going, and while you should feel a sense of belonging at your university of choice, settling in shouldn’t be your primary goal — adventuring out should be. This was something my older brother had understood when he’d started his freshman year of college with a solitary cross-country road trip, but try as he might, it wasn’t a message he was able to get across to me back in August.
Rather than trying out new things, I started out my freshman year by attempting to settle back into old habits. I joined Her Campus at TCU because it was the closest approximation to yearbook club, something I had participated in for the past four years of high school. I looked for volunteer opportunities at local churches because that’s where I used to volunteer back home. I wanted my world to feel predictable and controlled again, because I wanted to feel safe again, and seeking out the familiar was the only way I knew of doing that. Unfortunately, this strategy did not pay off like I hoped that it would. The reality was, change was inevitable, and while I tried my best to stop it, it still happened, like an ever-flowing tide.
I began to realize that my fight for constancy was perilous when my dad got another dog. I remember feeling offended at first that I hadn’t been consulted in the matter. After all, getting a new dog was a big deal, and I felt that it was something I should know about. Not being told about it until two weeks after the fact and not even being asked for name inspiration felt like an insult. Dog adoptions were big events in my family, and now they were something that I wasn’t even a part of. As dramatic as it sounds, it made me feel like I wasn’t a part of my family anymore. At least, not as much as I used to be.
While this isn’t true, it is true that my role in the family has changed. Now that I don’t live in my father’s house full-time, my opinions on things like whether or not we’re going to get a new dog ultimately matter less. This is because there is less of an expectation for me to take care of things at home, since I am quite literally not there most of the time, and, whether I like it nor, my family needs to move on and learn how to live without me.
Meanwhile, I was also changing. The “shy girl” reputation that I never seemed quite capable of scraping off in high school was long gone, and I realized that most people I met in Texas would never know how hard I had worked to come off as the outgoing, extroverted individual that I am perceived as now. My body also changed a lot, as I found myself going to the gym less and less while simultaneously eating more than I ever have. I am grateful for these changes since they came along with the restoration of my menstrual cycle (which I presume had stopped previously because I wasn’t taking enough calories to support that bodily function), but I am still grieving the physical strength and endurance that I was accustomed to having during my senior year of high school.
In other words, while these changes were uncomfortable, they were not so much personal losses as they were personal transformation. For, although this school year has challenged assumptions that I’ve made about myself and my place in the world, it’s also shown me that there are things I can do and be that I never dreamed of. So, just as the snake does not cling desperately to its dried-out skin, so shall I embrace these changes for what they are —growth.
That being said, while I am excited to go home for the summer, I won’t expect it to feel like the same home I left behind in the fall. I have a new dog now, my baby sister is turning 14 and starting high school(!), the tutoring center I worked at last summer closed down, and my high school friends are scattered all over the globe. A lot has changed, and I am finally coming to terms with the fact that it was always supposed to.
Although I fear I will always have a fondness for the familiar, I am slowly but surely learning to embrace the unknown. I will continue to have moments of doubt, just like Just like Nina from In the Heights during her solo “Breathe.” And I will continue to have days that overwhelm me, just like Aimee Carty and everyone else that related to her viral song “Two Days into College.” But what I will not do is let hyper focusing on my destination rob me of embracing the journey.