where do you call home?
 

So I am feeling very Carrie Bradshaw-ish on this lazy Sunday afternoon. I can't pen a column for a New York tab, so I will just write away here on Greekchat.

Its been nine months since I graduated from college in Southern Illinois and made to move to Chicago. It's amazing how quickly time has gone and how soon I will have to decide whether to stay here in Chicago or return to my family and friends and try to begin a career in St. Louis. So I have been thinking about where to call home.

Is home where your family is from and where your friends are? Or is is a place where you feel some connection to? Is it bound to one geographical location? Or can you be at home at many places at once.

In my 23 years of life as a military kid, I have followed my fathers career across continents, through the Lone Star State and around the Midwest. If you asked me where home was when I was in grade school, it would be easy. Home was Kentucky; that was where we went every Christmas and Turkey day, both of my parents families were there and its home of great basketball tradition written on the hundreds of blue sweatshirts in our closets, no matter that our closets were in a rented ranch in San Antonio. So, my fam would take the car, pack it up and drive the 18 some odd hours from Texas.

As I entered my teens, we moved to Illinois, where my parents are still. If you asked me at the end of high school, where home was I would have to say Belleville, an Illinois burb of St. Louis. It was where I went to high school, where my family had bought out first house, where our football team played, where we went to church. Belleville was still home when I left for college, but it was home in a sense that I could go back for laundry, food, money and pampering parents bestow on their kids when they leave the nest, albeit temporarily.

My sorority in college was my home away from home, despite the fact we only had a physical house for a year. It was a foundation that, although I knew would last only four years, it was strong. The greek variety show, late-night trips to Wal-Marty, formals ... I could go on and on. And for anyone who is greek, I hope you understand what I mean. There are too many memories to shell into a paragraph. And my college town has so many memories as it too was my temporary home - I love so many aspects and memories of my four years in Carbondale. The bars, the outdoors, campus lake, the parties, certain professors, Saluki sports ...

Now, nine months after college. I have a choice - Do I make Chicago home? There are things I have come to love about Chicago, if its possible to fall in love with a city. I love the lakefront, running along the beach and playing volleyball and laying out. I love the skyline as you drive down Lakeshore Drive. I love all the intricate neighborhoods and how I have found my way around this city on my own without a map - well most of the time. I love how I have been independant and on my own, and although it has been rough at times, I have survived. I love how my career has taken off. I work for the third largest newspaper in the state, and they have asked me to stay on when my year-long job is up.

But a phone call with a good friend in St. Louis when she tells me about the crazy night my friends had the night before and how they are planning to go to a Cardinals game and how her classes are going and that they are going to a 5-year high school reuntion, makes me want to go back. The fact still that I have not opened up to anyone in Chicago as I am open with my friends in St. Louis saddens me. If I am upset or sad over something, there is no one here I turn to call. I miss my parents, not so much that I miss being with them, but I see them aging and feel like I want to be closer to them and spend more time with them because I am just now realizing time is so precious.

So if you were to ask me where home now, I would launch into this long rant. Maybe I have been at home all along, and as long as I keep in mind who I am and what my priorities are, home won't be defined by distances, but it is hard to sort that all out.

Any thoughts?

Well, I've never left San Diego in 19 years of life. I went to High school and am going to college here, so I guess San Diego has always been and always be my home.

I've lived in Edmond, Oklahoma for 23 years... Might move as far away as Norman, OK. Went to HS in Oklahoma City... The Oklahoma City area is what I'd call 'home'.

I lived 1st couple of years of my life in North Vancouver, but have lived in Vancouver for 22 years now. So I call Vancouver home.

Richmond for now i guess. But I feel more at home at College than "back home"

well Linden, CA has always been my home. but since i left to attend sdsu, San Diego has been my home. when i graduate i know that i do not want to move back to Linden.
i guess home is where you feel connected. right now i feel connected in SD, but who knows what the future holds. in 5 years when everyone i know here will have graduated, will i be the only one left if i stay? will SD still be home?
anyway, your thread made me think...is home a place, or a feeling? is it the people, or the town? right now i could not dream of moving out of SD, but i know there will be a day soon when i will have to.

Up until I started college a little over 2 years ago - I had lived in my same chicago suburb all of my life - and loved every second of it :) Like you, I love the neighborhoods, downtown, how well I know my way around Chicago and its suburbs, the people, the skyline is beautiful especially at night, i love going to the lake in the summer - I love Chicago, and I know it will always be home for me :D

Don't get me wrong - Iowa City is a great college town - but thats what it is - a college town, somwhere you live for 4 years and then move on!

SLO, CA for at least the next 9 months.

This is a good question, and something I have been thinking of a lot lately (as you might have guessed from all my "where should I move?" questions). (Sidenote: oh crap, the Bears just lost :(.)

I grew up in a Chicago suburb, and my parents still live in the same house they lived in before I was born, so it is easy for me to call the Chicago area home. Iowa City was "home" for 4 years, but since that was for college, it was more of a home-away-from-home and never "home" for real. Now that I'm back in the Chicago area, it's home as it has always been.

I think, though, that home would be wherever I am at the moment. Although my family is here and most of my friends are here, I think that I could build a home for myself anywhere in the country (I'm very independent, anyway). This is actually very appealing to me lately, and I am seriously thinking about moving my home to some new place. I think that this would be very exciting and satisfying -- to go somewhere where I don't know anyone and to build my own "home" and friendships and life. I think that it would be an accomplishment, but I would still know that I would have a home here to return to if I ever wanted, even though I doubt I ever would, because I think that I would feel that it is taking a step back.

Of course, as I sit here, I am still in the safety net of "home" but I think I'm ready to go somewhere else as soon as I can.

I call two places home:

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (where I lived for 20 years!:D).....that's where my family and friends still are

and

Tallahassee, Florida....this is where I live now, for the past 2 years.

Home to me is two places, where I'm from....and where my husband and I have made a life for ourselves. To me, my apartment feels like home, but so does my parent's house (and Art's parent's house!:D)

I guess this means that I will have a changing location for one home as we don't intend to live forever in Tallahassee (in fact, we'll probably move when I'm done school here).....but I will always call Nova Scotia home!:)

I've lived in so many places, but Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania will always be "home" for me. It's a very distinctive place; I'm glad to be from there. Although I probably won't ever live there again, it'll always be a special place to me.

according to my dad Cincinnati is my home, since I was born and bred there, but every time i go back to Cinci I refer to Athens (OH, not GA) as home without even thinking. I guess they're both my home.

Madison, Wisconsin.

It's not really a big decision to make because I've lived there for all but one of my nineteen years. Last year I spent my freshman year of college in Minneapolis, and while I liked it and do sometimes miss it, I never once felt "at home" there.

I guess I'd have to call all of southern Ohio home. (Properly prounced "saw-then ahh-hi-ya") It's filled with all the little crafty shops, places where everyone knows at least one of your kin, and whereever you go you never seem out of place. People all smile when you walk by them and say 'hello' and yes, we even have the old men who sit out on benches and throw bread for the birds. :rolleyes: Also, it's gorgeous no matter where you go or what season it is, oh, and we actually -have- seasons unlike some states! So, yep, I love it here. Probably will stay around after I graduate also.

I'm 19...I lived in upstate NY (Norwich) until I was almost ten, and that will always be home for me... I moved to north central IN when I was almost 10...Went to middle school/high school there.. Left for almost a year for college in east central indiana....Quit school, moved to Michigan for a few months (to live with mom).. Then moved back to warsaw (to live with dad)... and have just moved back to east central indiana (where ball state is).. Sounds confusing, I know, but the long and the short of it is that NY will always be home for me - - ALWAYs... There's not enough emphasis I could put on that right now. Always a place in my heart, something I'll never forget. I went there this last march after having not been there for nine years and it was the most welcoming feeling I'd ever had in my life.. It was my home, I could still feel it.. I cried when I left to come back to indiana...I miss it all so much...

Depressed about home now, going to bed. :(