Life Unraveled (Temporarily, At Least)

It's move-out week, and as boxes and tubs filled with our belongings flood the halls, I get the feeling that my life is unraveling.

Everything stable about life here is stolen away every May (rhyme not intentional): our belongings packed away, our furniture torn apart and re-arranged, and the rooms cleaned spotless. It's supposed to look like we were never there, they tell us. It seems kind of odd to make a space your own for three quarters of the year but pretend like you were never there for the rest of it.

There is a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and sadness as each of us puts another box outside our door, as we place another container of odds and ends clothing, office supplies, and books on a shelf in storage. We are being removed from the World we've immersed ourselves in for nearly an entire year, and with it goes the families that we have made for ourselves.

I'm not quite sure how many times I've told a friend, "I'm not sure what I'll do without you for three months." I am about to leave this campus for more than quadruple the amount of time I've been gone before. It is odd to feel apprehensive about going home, to My Bed, My Bathroom, My Mom's Food.

And as my new-found family and I scatter across the country and even the world, we can see in each other's eyes that none of us want to leave each other. I am ready to go home for a while, yet the chance to stay here with these people is at times significantly more tempting. These are the people I have come to know and love and laugh with and cry with.

I have said it before and I will say it again, home is where the heart is. Right now, my heart is in the plaza on a warm day, sitting at a coffee shop laughing about the way a friend says a phrase, eating at restaurants we should have exhausted by now but yet can't get away from, staying up till all hours making God-talk.

But I am ready to return to my roots. To a place where you don't hear a siren every half-hour, a place where you can drive from A to B without having to allot extra time for traffic, a place where the only Starbucks within feasible distance is 15 minutes away. I am ready for slow afternoons reading a book with my dog, for the sound of mowers and hedge trimmers, the smell of wood burning and rain falling. I am ready for late-night Taco Bell runs and once a week Chipotle dinners. I am ready to watch movies twice a week because we can't think of anything else to do.

I am ready for home.

So, as my life unravels, and boxes pack and people board planes, trains, and automobiles and scatter hither and thither, I am willing for my life to unravel, if only to see the change in our Tapestry come August.