“Unboxing a Home” by Kelly Myers

I always thought that when you got older, you were supposed to gain a greater consciousness of your own being and greater stability in what is slowly becoming more your own life. Whenever anything got complicated, whether I got a poor grade on a test in eighth grade or I had lost one of my favorite dolls in Kindergarten, I calmly believed that things would only continue to get easier as I learned more and grew older. I now realize that I would only come to learn what “the more I know, the less I know” means.

When I was five, I had one home. I had my one house, on my one street, in my one town. My inner circle was composed of my immediate family and one or two close friends, with whom I was compatible based on our shared interest in some make-believe scenario or another. When I got older and left Pennsylvania for Newark, Delaware, my circle got bigger. My home grew from my cozy childhood house, and stretched across state lines into a college town that was, at first glance, best described as “gray.” The people in my circle expanded from my tight-knit family to my new roommates, the guys next door, and the people in my hall that were willing to take a chance by hanging out with me on some Thursday night where we were both free and learning how to procrastinate, college-style.

Unfortunately, I have taken enough statistics classics to be able to reflect on my early college relationships and understand that the greater a sample size (in this case, the circle), the greater the probability of disliking a larger portion of the sample. I struggled with this. I struggled with the concept of a forced home environment where I was not completely comfortable with or particularly fond of every person I passed in the hall on a weekday. I had lost control. I felt myself becoming absorbed into my gray surroundings whilst going through the motions of what I had perceived to be a normal college life: class, homework, eat alone, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat. A seemingly simplistic and leisurely schedule quickly became exhausting for reasons that were, at the time, beyond me. It has become apparent with time that I was attempting to fit all of my preconceived notions of what home was, into the fourteen-by-nine box I shared with two girls from Long Island.

It has become apparent that I could never fit Doylestown, Pennsylvania into that small room. It would never be the place where I ate Boston Crème donuts with a fork after my preschool ballet classes. It would never be the place where I got ready for all of my first dates in high school, or the place where I came home to complain to my mother about how disastrous my junior prom was. Room 378 would never house my high school sweetheart, nor the holes in my mantle from the hooks that held my family Christmas stockings, nor the family dinner table whose wood had numbers and letters etched into it by the stress of practicing long division. I was trying to fit too much into that small room, that one box that I had only painted one color.

It was hard to let go of the memories and familiarities I had clung to for the first semester of college. As I gained new friends, my old definition of “friend” was no longer applicable on its own. I had new friends from new places, who had grown up in different girl scout troops with different customs and socioeconomic implications (because what’s childhood without the bitter politics of upholding the Girl Scout Law?). My inner circle was growing again, extending outside of the walls of my freshman dorm. My living situation was no longer a murky grey – it was a vibrant mess of so many different colors that I am still attempting to put in order and make sense of. This mess of colors did not make up the white yin to the black yang of my home in Doylestown, but was much messier. Yet, it was color nonetheless. Newark, Delaware was no longer grey.

As my definition of who my friends were evolved, so did my definition of myself. This transition came with losing some people from my past, letting go of possessions that did not fill the void of my childhood home, and changing perceptions of my life in Pennsylvania. As I write this reflection, I have finished the third semester of my undergraduate career. I am happy and adjusted, and I do not spend my nights staring at the wall, reminiscing and wishing that I were anywhere else. From freshman to sophomore year I have learned how to regain some of my control and autonomy, and therefore now live on my own rather than in Room 378 with my two previous roommates (even though we do stay in touch). Some people need roommates – I just needed a year in a triple to realize how badly I required my own space.

My conscious memories take me back to 7am on a Wednesday morning, as I am home during the last week of Winter session. I am in my own full-size bed in Doylestown. This time last year, I was near tears, dreading the voyage I would soon make away from home and back south to Room 378. This isn’t to say that I am not sad to leave for school again, one year later. However, this sadness stems from a fondness for what I am leaving behind, not from the dread of an immediate future.

The sun is rising. My bedroom window looks out towards the east – my windows at school face west. The day is starting out a little grey, but is bound to get brighter as the hours tick towards dusk. The early light that softly spans my backyard makes the space somewhat reminiscent of the French countryside (that I have never been to), which is different from the colonial atmosphere of the brick buildings that my view at the University provides. Doylestown is different from Newark, and contrary to what I once believed, “different” does not mean “better.” Some elements of Newark are better than that of Doylestown, and some are worse. My family in Doylestown are my home, my friends in both Doylestown and Newark are my home, and my studies in Newark have become my home as well. I have become an amalgamation of all of the colors that make up my life, and I am more confused than ever. I know that I am going to gain more friends, more definitions, and more homes as the days and years walk on, but I’m not dreading the confusion that I know I will gain as well.

I’ll just have to find a bigger box.