This is Home

I've missed this.

Drinking well-water straight from a faucet. Having my own quiet attic room to myself. Calling up friends and seeing their faces fifteen minutes after I hang up the phone. Driving down country roads, windows down, music just as loud as I want it to be.

Yeah, I've missed being home.

Home is where I feel the most comfortable...and yet I don't actually feel like I fit. There's faces and places that I'll not soon forget, but I'm a wanderer now, and that feeling won't soon disappear. Being a wanderer puts you on edge and sets you free; you're always waiting to dive into what's next, your thoughts always pulsing towards something else.

Being home should be stable and warm and...it is. Mostly.

But it's also a reminder. A reminder that the people I left here aren't quite the same anymore. A reminder that reality does exist and "America, land of the free" happens to be adding more rules to the list.

It's a horrible thought that what I felt was a temporary, glorious lifestyle as a gypsy, can't stay that way. Either it has to be a permanent situation (living out of my suitcase, never really having a home), or my life has to start changing, and I need to "grow up" and get some real knowledge and a real job so I can pay for taxes. Obviously, none of that is very attractive to me. I've been doing quite well with my life, I thought. Spending 3-6 months in different places is not a bad deal.

Do I have to focus bills and taxes? Those things are exactly why I never went to the university I wanted to go to - money, debt, taxes. I get that everyone else on this planet is struggling for survival. I understand that the world operates on money that no one really has. I don't want that to tear me down, though. I don't want to focus on that. When I look around me, I don't see freedom. I see bondage.

And that's why I'm trying to create my own sort of freedom. I've chosen jobs and situations that don't put me in debt and that don't create bills for me. Honestly, the only thing I consistently pay for is my cell phone. Sure, I'm not at the top of the food chain, and it hasn't gotten me far. But look where I'm standing. I've gotten to travel. I've made so many friends. I am happy.

College isn't bad. Neither is a "normal" life. But I am so incredibly glad that my life has been anything but normal. That God has led me in all sorts of random ways to all sorts of places.

I suppose it comes down to that, doesn't it? That He hasn't led me to go back to school. He hasn't led me to seek out a successful life. And I'm okay with that.

Ah, home. Where raindrops are plentiful and snow in April isn't shocking. Where the people are mostly friendly and all of them want to leave the state. Where fast food restaurants thrive and everything else struggles to get by. Ohio holds the people I most care about.

I've missed this. I've only got two weeks to enjoy it.