I. You expect to go to college and leave it behind. You think it will always be there for you, like a book you can pick right back up. But it changes. Someone has moved your bed. Your bookshelf is filled with another person’s collection. Everything is different. You wonder how you spent eighteen years here, roaming halls that now feel like a museum.
II. One thousand miles away at college, you decorate a closet of a room. Cover the cinder block walls with posters and pictures. Cover the walls with something, anything to remind yourself that this space is yours. Though you still don’t feel it, the contentment promised. Instead, you feel a pushing and pulling deep in your gut. You crawl into your twin bed. Pull the sheets over you. You feel as if you’re floating from point A to B. You belong here, don’t you? If not here, then where?
III. It changes slowly, like the color of leaves. It does not make itself known until those leaves are gone and replaced with bare branches. You find a spot in the library where light pours in despite the cold. You feel… something. Not a push or pull, but warmth. The knots once there begin to loosen. You realize you’ve felt it before. Something that was gone is now everywhere. In nights spent adventuring with new friends. In the arms of a person you’ve come to love. It has always been there, right? Maybe it was lost among the seasons. You begin to smile. You’re home.