Home Sweet Home

Everyone has a future they've picked for themselves. Whether its go to college, get a degree, start a business, or take a few years off, they all have one thing in common: Getting away from home. No one pictures themselves trapped in the house with their parents and under their jurisdiction. Everyone imagines all the crazy, late nights with amazing friends, and having the overall freedom to do whatever they want. No parents to worry about catching you, or standards to meet. You're on your own, and I think this is every teenager's dream. Independence is so close and within reach, that teenagers often rebel against their parents in order to practice this freedom they long for. After focusing on all these hopes and dreams, everyone forgets to ask some important questions. What happens when you are on your own? Away from the world? Separated from the people that you grew up with and love you unconditionally? Well here's the reality of it.

You're going to be waking up in a different bed every morning, and not to the smell of your mom's famous waffles. So much will change over night: your bed, your surroundings, where you live, who you live with, but it won't sink in till a few days later. It'll most likely hit you when you're by yourself in this new, foreign space with unrecognized surroundings. But, I mean, come on. You've got freedom! You can stay up as late as you want, sleep in till whatever time you want, eat whatever you want, and make your own rules to live by for once. Then you go off in to the world, defining who you are by what college you're going to, what classes you're taking, and what your future plans are. You are put out in to the world to find yourself, and make a new life. You take the road less traveled, and sometimes the road most traveled. You make mistakes, but who cares right? No one to get in trouble with! Then that once unrecognizable room becomes almost as close to home as the room you grew up in does. You start to gain some comfort in this room that is officially yours, just like you had in your childhood house.

Then a long break comes along. Either a break in your classes, or just on your own schedule, and you decide to return home. It feels amazing to lay on the bed you received countless goodnight kisses in, and just spend a few nights in it. Your poster covered walls you spent hours cutting images out of magazines to create readjusts to your eyes. And that smell of being home fills your body. Your home hasn't changed one bit, but you have. You've experiences tons of new things, and seen thousands of new people and places, so somethings feels different. But then you soon come to realize, your room isn't different, and neither is the atmosphere of the house. It's you. And after all these things that have made you and broke you, and created another person, it's always nice to come back to your old room, and in to your parents' open arms. This is the one thing that people don't realize when they picture their futures. They don't realize how much where they came from influences who they are, and what they're going to become. When you take all this in to account, home has never sounded sweeter.