may 2

tonight is my last night at this house.  my uncle wants to start packing stuff into the moving truck at 9 AM tomorrow.  I didn't think I'd become emotionally attached - it was supposed to be a temporary deal from the beginning.  but I think of the phone calls I had in the back yard as I was stepping from one jagged stone to the next.  or the ones sitting on the white plastic armchair in front of the entry door, and I was wearing my big black jacket to keep the snow from soaking my sweatshirt underneath.  we talked early into the morning.

I feel homesick.  I never get homesick, but I am.  every trip I've been on, I wished it was longer.  I never wanted to come home.  even here I bitched for months about missing my friends, and I really did.  but I was missing the comforts of home, the people and familiar places.  right now, as of maybe an hour ago when the reality sunk in that this is the last time I wake up on this hateful, worn out, creaky, third-hand mattress and look out the window to the blooming trees and skyscrapers far behind, I feel like I'm losing something I just started to love.

I dig deeper and realize it's not this house I'm missing but the idea of "home."  as I'm about to lose one again, I'm realizing how abstract and transitory that idea really is.  it doesn't exist within four walls so much as in our heads.