there is no replacement

for home.

I know it's where the heart is, but there is something permanent and unmovable about it, too.

There is something about having familiar walls to your bedroom, in a familiar town, with your parents down the hallway so you can run in there if something bad were to happen.

There is something beautiful about that, home being a physical place.

I am a twenty-one-year-old girl and I still sometimes sit in bed at night, here in Charlottesville, and feel that deep pang I remember from summer camps, of just wanting my own bed, of wanting to wake up to the coffee-pot half drained by my dad and good morning hugs from my mom. I still feel the deepness of that - the homesickness.

Tonight, my mother and I both had a hard time sleeping, and we found each other on g-chat after midnight. We talked like we were both up in the kitchen in our pajamas, in the deepness of a quiet house, chatting about life. But we were in separate houses, separate towns. And that hurt in my gut came to me, the one of just wishing I wasn't so grown-up, or wishing I was snuggled in my room where I could hear the wind-chimes on the patio and the courthouse bells every hour. And I felt like mourning for something, without really knowing what. Maybe mourning my own maturity, how it crept up on me without asking me if it was alright.

I'm excited for this summer. I'm excited to dig into Charlottesville, to root all around the hidden gems of this city, to create it into something I can call my own. And I'm excited to see the world one day, too. I'm excited to travel and understand the places and people who span distances I have only dreamed about. I'm excited to fall in love with the corners of this planet.

but I promise you, there isn't an inch of land that will ever be more precious to me than home.

and while I'll keep it in my heart, tonight I'm allowing myself the sadness of wanting to be there, in that physical house, with the walls that are familiar, and the people I love.