Home

Two weeks ago, as I was getting ready to come back to Princeton to lead an Outdoor Action (OA) trip, I found myself getting more and more excited at the prospect. I felt guilty — here I was, spending my final two days with my parents, and all I could think about was "I can't wait to get back to school." I didn't mean to upset my mom and dad, but I couldn't help it. I was homesick.

It was an odd sensation. In the past year, I've spent more time in Princeton than I have in the house I grew up in, so it's not surprising that I feel more comfortable anywhere on campus than I do in my very own bedroom at home. But it was sad — I felt displaced, like I'd been kicked out of my home. In "Garden State" (great movie), Zach Braff's character says that one day you realize the house you grew up in isn't your home anymore. It's something that I never could have imagined, but it's true. In the past year I've spent maybe two months in that house, and suddenly my bed is too short, my pillows are too soft and my room is too dark. I find myself being completely antisocial because it's just too much trouble to have to get in the car to go see my friends. Anything that isn't within walking distance seems out of reach.

It's taken me a while to figure out that I haven't just been tossed out on my butt. Home isn't a location — it's a sense of comfort. The cliche that "home is where the heart is" though trite, is true. Home is wherever the people who love you and the people you love are, be that a house in Los Angeles, Princeton's campus or a cornfield in Nebraska. My concept of home has taken on a fluidity — it doesn't matter that for the next four years, I'll never live in the same place for more than nine months at a time; whatever tiny little space I try (and fail) to cram my massive amounts of stuff into, wherever my parents decide to move now that I'm out of the house, that's home.

Homesickness is something that's a problem for a lot of freshmen. It's scary living somewhere completely new with people you've never met before, and it's sad leaving the place where you grew up and the people you spent the first 17 or 18 years of your life with. It feels like once you leave, things will never be the same; you and your high school friends will change and grow apart, have new lives that don't involve each other; your parents won't be there to take care of you anymore, and you'll be too mature to think that they can still solve all your problems. You feel like you'll never be able to be as comfortable there as you were.

But it doesn't work that way. You could move to the North Pole and take up dog sledding, but when you come home and see your friends and parents, it wouldn't matter that they'd been living it up in sunny southern California. Because no matter how different you become, they're still the people who care about you, who make you feel comfortable.

Nowadays I don't feel displaced anymore. I haven't lost a home, I've gained one more. As the OA bus drove back onto campus three days ago, I got more and more excited. It didn't matter that I was coming back to a room I'd hardly ever been in before, or that the place I'd lived in my freshman year was now a pile of rubble. My friends were there. My roommate who would hug me even though I hadn't showered for a week, my other roommate who would soundly whomp me in Boggle about four times in the next 48 hours, the people who take care of me, who ruthlessly make fun of me, who keep me sane, who make me feel safe, they're all here. And as much as I miss my parents, and my dog, and my friends in L.A., I know they'll still be there for me wherever I go; that whether it's home in Santa Monica or home in Cuyler Hall, they're only a phone call away. So right now, sitting here in the window seat of my new home writing this column, there's no place that I'd rather be.

Alexis Levinson is a sophomore from Los Angeles, Calif. She can be reached out arlevins@princeton.edu.