Going Home

I love going home to the comfort of my bed, the familiarity of my kitchen, and the love of my dog. There are a million memories and a million laughs that have been shared in that home. My hometown is where I met my friends and where we had all of our childish fights. My home holds my past and I know that I can always go back and enjoy the things I have left behind, but there is a problem-I go home a different person. The place I remember, the place I love, has not changed but I am so different. How can you go back home, if you see the world in a completely different way?

I go home around every other weekend and almost every time I go home he tells me that I have become too liberal. My family is strictly conservative and I used to be as well. Like most young people, I thought the sun rose and set in my parents’ opinions. Now that I have been in college and away from home for over three years, I see things and examine my own beliefs before I think “What would my parents do?” They are happy that I challenge them and have my own beliefs, but I am a great debater and my Dad and I get a little competitive with the heated conversations. I know that everyone grows up and their opinions and beliefs change, but I never noticed how rigid my parents’ beliefs were until mine had changed.

At graduation everyone says that we are going to be the friends that stay close forever and that we will be the exception to the rule that says everyone drifts apart after high school. We were wrong. I haven’t seen my best friend form high school in two years. He was just like me and knew how to make me laugh when I needed to the most. He went to North Carolina State and I went the UNCW. We talked for the first few weeks we were away, but by the end of the first semester we were barely talking. Looking back on the things that made us friends, the things that we had in common all of those things have changed. In my hometown, we were the two smartest people in our school. We worked together and we had every class together. We were friends because we had so much in common we had to be. Now everything that made us friends is gone and I cannot imagine us being friends now.

Every time I go home for a high school football game or go shopping in our local Wal-Mart, I am afraid that I will see a former close friend. That awkward “how are you” conversation is something that I avoid, because I cannot tell them how I am—I am stronger, more independent, and the childish things that made me think you were going to be a great and successful person are gone.

I can go home anytime I want, it’s only an hour away, but I am not the person who left. Nothing has changed there, but everything has changed in me.