to build a home

the air is getting warmer, the sunsets are more pink, and the flowers are falling from the trees while still bursting out of the ground. the last years school year ended and everyone packed up and went back home. home. a place where so many things fall back together like nothing ever changed in the first place. like no one got older and decided to leave. where things stay the same no matter how much time has passed or people have changed. the good, and the bad. the comfortable, and the uncomfortable. just there, like old time traditions. and you can't help but love them and want them back, even just for one night, even when you and everyone else will leave the same town once again in a few days, weeks, or months. that is, until the next time you all find you're way back home. all coming together again.

since I've been back home, I have felt this in many different waves. I have had to face the reality on how so many little things can change just to eventually alter everything else that follows it. how the things you've let go of, have a funny way of coming back and pulling you away from how far you've come. how the simplest things you used to take advantage of every single day are the ones you most look forward to spending your time doing.

for me, this stems so much from the people and the places I allow myself to focus on. past and current relationships. past and current places I have lived, that allowed me to grow in every which bent and broken way that makes me, the person I was before to the person who I am now. the safe havens I can go (or remember) that allow me to be myself. the me that feels most right in that place and time. with certain expectations, or no expectations at all. which ever one may pertain to which. these are my safety nets. and boy do I have a heart, and mind, in need of saving.

in the past ten or so days, I have found my way back to the life I always wanted to soak up and carry with me. I have seen the faces of all my best friends. you have no idea how indescibly lucky I am to know and have the people that I do in my life so consistently. and I know everyone says that, but it's so overwhelming to have such a variety of genuinely caring and good hearted people that care so much about one another, and YOU specifically. I have walked the streets of my hometown downtown. the history and culture and pride buzzing with each step and glance you take. I've had lunch at cute diners. coffee at a new reopened location (actual heaven sent to come home to). I have bought flowers for myself and loved ones at a tucked away treasure of a flower shop. I have gone boating and felt the sunshine on my shoulders and the wind in my hair (cliche I know but you don't grow up in the midwest without living for this exact feeling. a feeling I will never not look forward too). I have cut my hair to my shoulders and felt sassier than ever. I have ran around my old high school track and laid on the high jump mats until four am like we all used to do when we were so young and angsty and rebellious - even more so than what we currently are now. I have worked my butt off, but enjoyed every minute of it..even the ones I didn't actually enjoy. I have laughed. I have cried. I have been angry. I have been sad. I have grown. I have back tracked. I have done so many things, in just a short period of time. and yet, I still have so many things to do with the time I am given to be back home, and I'm sure by the end of it I will be thinking to myself how those three months weren't even close to enough..

being back home has allowed me to really reflect on the person I am becoming. my home has seen me grow. it has seen me change. it has always been there, even when other places in time, and people, haven't been. weren't. or couldn't be.

the small and simple. the big and exciting. the old and the new. that's the thing with growing up. there are so many more opportunities for you to try out and experience, even in the same place you spent your entire life growing up in. but there are still small simple factors that you can't give up. that you want to indulge in one last time. this is what being back home is for me. what baraboo is for me. what the back roads are for me. what the tucked away places in the town over are for me. the long drive back to my new home that I share with my best friend, is for me.

to build a life, is to build a home. the old and the new. the bland and the worth while. the places and the people. It is so comforting to come back to where I come from, but to also realize the pieces of me I left behind in my new home back in my college town. and the pieces of myself that I'm saving for other places that I may one day end up calling home.

time has a funny way of putting everything into perspective. different places. different times. different perspectives. all coming together in a lifetime. all being the most meaningful occurrences in the world, while other times those exact occurrences can result in being the most seemingly meaningless chances of fate to have ever happend.

like the movie The Sun Is Also A Star cared to remind me, "We are like Butterflies Who Flutter For A Day and Think It's Forever."