I came back to my hometown
with laundry and textbooks and stories I didn’t know how to tell.
The house looked the same from the road—
paint still tired, porch still leaning—
but it breathed differently when I walked inside.
The walls remembered me smaller.
The rooms felt quieter, like they’d learned how to grieve
while I was gone.
I noticed things I never saw before:
the crack in the ceiling,
the pause before someone answered my questions,
the way love now carried weight in its hands.
I’ve changed too.
College taught me how to speak up,
how to carry myself,
how to imagine a future bigger than this zip code.
That’s good.
I know it is.
But it aches to outgrow the place that raised you,
to realize you can’t fit back into old corners
without bending.
Being home hurts because it proves
nothing freezes just because you leave.
And being away hurts worse—
sitting in lecture halls, pretending to focus,
while your phone lights up with pieces of home breaking apart.
You learn quickly how far miles can stretch
when you’re helpless on both ends.
At school, I feel guilty for laughing.
At home, I feel guilty for leaving again.
I live suspended between two versions of myself:
the one who had to grow,
and the one who still wants to be held
by familiar doors and familiar pain.
Still—
change doesn’t mean loss, even when it feels like it.
Growth doesn’t mean abandonment.
I am allowed to become
without erasing where I came from.
Home is still home.
So am I.
Even when we’re both learning how to be something new