This past weekend, I made the four-hour drive back to my hometown in Iowa.
I live just north of the city of Dubuque. There’s not much there: the Mississippi River, a main street perfect for any bar-crawling enthusiast and a lot of farms.
But my friends are there. My school is there. My family is there. I was genuinely excited to go home.
I rolled into Dubuque Friday evening and was pretty underwhelmed. I didn’t know what to expect. I hated high school while I was stuck in it. There wasn’t anything exciting going on in town. But I still couldn’t quite place that nasty butterfly feeling in my stomach.
It took me all weekend to figure out what is was.
I’ve never missed a place before. Sure, I have fond memories of places—learning to drive in the John Deere parking lot, sledding into that oak tree in my backyard and giving myself a concussion, water skiing on the Mississippi every summer—but I’m not overly attached to the places themselves.
But I missed Peoria. I missed school.
No way in hell am I saying that Peoria is my new forever home. It smells like death, there are too many people and quite frankly, I’d like to get out of the Midwest as soon as possible. But I’m glad I got to come here.
I’m still not sure how to address these newfound feelings. I’ve never been a feelings person, and I’ve certainly never been a clingy person.
But I’m slowly coming to realize that college has changed me. My mom always told me that school won’t start to feel like home until you’ve been there a year or two, and I think she’s right. Last year I didn’t really miss Dubuque at all, but I definitely wasn’t that jazzed about Peoria, either. Now, things are different.
This is where my friends are. This is where my school is. This is where my family is.
