Coming Home

So it's 12:30 AM and I still have a week of finals ahead of me. As I sit here wondering how I wasted an entire day that could have been put toward productive studying, I can't help but thinking about everything that has happened in the past year, and about how much I can't wait to be home.

Last fall semester, I returned home to an inevitable breakup and spent an awful lot of time questioning what direction my life would have taken if things didn't go the way they had. My whole first semester of college seems like a blur, and aside from classes and dance, I can't say that it was utterly eventful. I was going through the motions because I had plans back home, and while I'm thankful for everything that relationship taught me, I was being held back.

For months I kept telling myself that if I could just make it sorority recruitment, things would work out for the better. I would find my group of friends. It would be easier to do things. I would have a place where I belonged and could shine and feel on top of the world. And then recruitment came, and all that I knew to be good and true seemed to disappear. The plan, the path that I convinced myself would lead me to happiness, was shifted, and the ground gave out beneath my feet. I will never be able to fully thank the two incredible souls who cried it out with me on Bid Night, because the words I will never forget are "if we're going to do this, we're doing it together."

Saturday, the 19th of December, officially marks one year of being single, and I have learned more about myself in the past year than I ever have before. I've become more positive, developed a "take no one's crap" attitude, and made myself a leader. I am dancing my heart away, choreographing pieces, and finally feeling contentment in that group of friends. I am heading the online media for my sorority (#LeadingWomen), am on as many committees as I can fit in, and have realized that Kappa Alpha Theta is exactly where I am supposed to be. I don't think I've ever had a better year.

I've also realized that there are two types of homes. Whenever I come back to New Jersey, I feel this warm sense of security and family, the way you feel after a long vacation. It smells the same as it always did, and it looks the same (except for that new addition, lol), and it reminds me of times bygone. I look at my bedroom the same way I look at my mother's room when I visit my grandma - a standstill time capsule of a life that once was. It no longer feels like my room, it feels like it only belongs to my younger self. Like a memory of a past life.

Today, home means something different. Home is finding friends in my major who are just as passionate about sustainability and climate as I am. Home is having someone who will wake you up on registration day and blast Christmas music with you the second Halloween ends. It's eating dinner consistently on Tuesday night at 6:30 and people who ask if you ever turned in that paper about the US-Israeli relationship. Home is the nights my best friend and I crammed into one twin bed, and the midnight adventures around the dorm to find out what floor that cute boy lives on. Home also means chapter meetings and and pasta dinners and having people who bring you paper flowers post-recital.

I'm ready to get out of here for a little while, to be home with family and to celebrate Christmas. But as excited as I am to head back to New Jersey, in three weeks from now I'll be coming back home. 2015 looked good on you, Hop.