Home vs. home

I was lucky enough to spend my spring break away from home. I went Home. I didn't need a fancy beach vacation. I like going Home.

I've always been very close to my family, and I consider myself exceedingly lucky to have these people in my life. But every blessing has some twinge of a curse. It's the dualistic nature of the universe to pair opposites: yin and yang, black and white, etc. The curse of having so many wonderful people in my life is that I'm perpetually Homesick. No matter how settled I am into my adult home, I still always long for Home. Home with my family. Home where I belong to people. Home where I am a daughter and a sister, not just a single woman, a professor, and a friend.

I joked with my students before spring break that I was jealous of those who were going somewhere exciting, that I didn't think it was fair. But the truth was, I was just as excited to go Home as they were to go to Florida, South Padre, or the Caribbean.

And I left my parents' house this morning, and their company later in the afternoon, with that familiar sense of dread. That feeling of going to a strange familiar place I call home in my everyday life, but that can't compare to Home. Even if I have a family of my own someday, I don't think it will compare to the Home I've known my whole life. I'll always want to leave home for Home.