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You are loved.



It's been ten days since I returned from my trip home to Kansas. Ten days that have felt like ten weeks. I'm not sure if it's because of dramatic events at home, the start of classes, or the beginning of a beautiful new friendship, but I was reminded today of the importance of writing, even if only for myself. I'm done worrying about if what I say is right or politically correct or polished. I'm starting to notice that the more raw we are with each other the more likely the relationship will last.

The gratitude that I feel for all the places and people in my life are kind of overwhelming at this moment in time. Over the coming weeks I hope to highlight the value of these relationships and how they've gotten me to where I am today, but for now, it's worth recapping one of the most emotional weeks of the year and what you have to gain from making time for people that matter.

My time back in Lawrence began to fill in pieces of the puzzle what home is, really. Pieces I didn't know were out of place until suddenly I found myself overwhelmed with tears, showered with compliments, navigating from here to there with a muscle memory that can only really come from a place you grew up in.

Home is watching the homeless from afar.

It's the stability of sameness. Librarians sitting at their help desk posts as they have for as long as I can remember.

The inevitability of running into someone you know. Seeing familiar faces in passing--an old classmate from junior high, my best friend's mother.

It's feeling as though your obligations from another place geographically are incompatible with your old routines: a tearful phone call with a dear friend, compressing photos until the wee hours of the morning, setting up meetings for the week to come.

It's the pain of sameness. Relationships of loved ones still strained, struggling, striving for improvement but not quite getting there.

Home is the shock and awe of resilience. A beloved farm decimated by a tornado, working anew to forge ahead into the unknown, inevitable future.

Home is a hug so good and needed you walk away with tears in your eyes and wonder how you could have ever left in the first place.

Home is being looked in the eyes as if there were no where else your thoughts can go to crawl and hide away from the truth of your own desperation.

It's opening the pantry door and having your shoulders slump and the air fill with a heavy sigh of relief.

It's reveling in the small moments when you get to hear crickets chirping instead of semi-trucks whirring.

It's settling into the couch and watching bad sitcoms, interrupting each other over exciting news. Not paying enough attention to what the others are saying. Sharing a meal at the dining room table.

It's seeing inevitable deterioration of health that comes with time.

It's wondering if you could ever be the person you've become if you returned, feeling as though everything about this place makes you feel like a juvenile version of yourself.

It's following the people who make you feel whole, even if that means driving three hours in the wrong direction.

It's having people drive two hours to see you, and being reminded of the good ol' days of sleepovers.

Home is where the heart is. But the head doesn't--and perhaps shouldn't--always follow. It's been a little over a year since I moved away from home, and I couldn't be happier with that decision. I just didn't realize how painful it would be to return and recognize that in doing so I've accepted a profound compromise; that is, of never being able to take part in all the special moments of the lives of those I love and care for.

Gratitude doesn't even begin to describe the way that these people lift me up. I only hope that through the work that I do for others in this life I can live up to your expectations of me.

Yours truly,
Emily




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