Back Home

A lot of friends and acquaintances have asked me how it is to be back in my dorm room. I still don't really have a straight answer, and frankly, I have to say it feels a little strange.

When I left back in December for my residential "home", I felt like I was leaving the greater of my two homes. My dorm was truly a place of safety and comfort for me--my things and my life organized the way I pleased and desired. However, when I eventually got back to the Bay Area, my room back home felt like an alien environment. Like my dorm, it was my former place of safety and comfort. But when I returned, I had to rearrange furniture and return possessions that had been stashed for storage in the nooks and crannies. It was to say the least an annoying and irksome process of moving back in. By the end of break my room had become my home again, however only after a series of scented candle burnings and a fierce organizational overhaul.

My return to collegiate "home" was also a somewhat laborious process. After schlepping nearly three suitcases full of clothes old and new, my famed wooden hangers, and my menagerie of hygienic knickknacks, I had to unpack and recreate my environment nearly from scratch. From the second I walked in the room, it smelled stale and acrid. Glasses were left unwashed and the sheets were left unmade. Cords were unplugged left and right, by purported environmental conservationists. "Ugh," I murmured, as I washed my sheets and hung/shelved a seemingly endless array of clothing. My towels were pretty grody, too.

But as much as this may sound like a self-indulgent rant about superficial annoyances, I cannot stress enough what it really means to have "something to come home to." I realize now I won't ever be able to live some nomadic life, traveling whichever direction the wind carries me. I really need a home base--a nest I build with metaphorical twigs I gather and assemble.