I think that a lot of people don’t realize the difference between a house and a home. I like to think that if you have to think about whether or a certain place is your home, then it's not. Maybe it’s the closest thing you have to a home, but if you have a true home you know it.

Do you know that feeling you get when you walk into your house after a long day at school or work or just a stressful night, and you walk in and everything is quieter than outside, a little bit cooler, and you let out a sigh, either in your head or out loud? That’s what home feels like, even now I imagine what my home looks like when I walk into it, my front hall table right in front of me, stairs to the side inviting me to room, dining room table to the right where I have memories of home cooked meals and family, very poorly colored tiles beneath my feet, beginning to crack; that house on Kitty Hawk will always be my home.

Moving sucks, it is no fun at all. Before 9th grade I moved from upstate New York to Georgia. I still remember the last night we spent in my home, we originally were supposed to leave that night, but after the movers came, and every bit of furniture except the couches we were leaving for the new owners in the basement. That’s where we slept that night. My mom, my sister, and myself, just camping out for one last night (my dad had already moved to Georgia for his new job). It was surreal to see the only home I’ve ever known empty, no tangibility anymore; it was like a funeral. That’s what you lose when you move, the tangibility of home, but the thought is still there.

My mother and I (along with two dogs) made the 15 hour drive in one day to an apartment where my dad had been living. I won’t waste time explaining why that wasn’t a home, but I do remember my first night there. I slept on an air mattress by the porch window, and I was in shock the whole night. I woke up in an unfamiliar place, that was my living space for the next two months. But that point everything had moved so fast that I was unclear whether not the past 3 days were real.

When we moved into our new house, that’s when it became quite clear to me that not every house is a home. The whole place felt alien to me, and the entire moving process was like hell. Moving all of our furniture from a storage facility into a Uhaul and then into our new “home”. I was like everything was off, like a little pebble in your shoe. My first few months here were rough. I didn’t know anybody or anything, I wasn’t even familiar with the grocery stores here. I had no memories attached to anything, it was a bad vacation that didn’t end.

As time went on and I met people and became familiar with the place, I guess I can call my house here a home, but I’ve missed that feeling that Kitty Hawk gave me, that will always be my true home. Home is where your memories lie, if I were to look outside my bedroom window in Rochester I would have a memory attached to every inch of my yard, every tree, every house, everything. Home is that sigh when you walk in the door. Home is where your friends and family are, so for me Rochester will always be home, but home is also a place of mind, where everything feels in place, where there’s familiarity. As I make more and more memories here, I make my home.