Home is whispered conversations with my brother in the hallway outside our rooms at 2:30 am, when neither of us can sleep and neither of us want to risk the ire of mom and dad by making any substantial noise.

Home is a twin sized bed with piles and piles of blankets and sheets that are in shades a bit more pastel then I feel.

Home is mom’s Santa Fe chicken, served almost painfully hot, that I still can’t wait to bite in to. Somehow it’s always so much better than I can make, even when I follow the recipe word for word and note for note.

Home is water pressure in the shower that’s hard enough to wash all the shampoo out of my hair and soft enough that it doesn’t hurt my back when I stand in there for much longer then I need to.

Home is the giant toothbrush, almost taller than I am, in the bathroom I share with my little brother.  It scares guests and makes me giggle when I imagine, usually while it’s late at night and I’m overtired,  a giant trying to brush their teeth.

Home is the fridge covered in graduation pictures of kids I know well and kids I know only in passing, all of whom have somehow worked their way in to my parent’s hearts. Their smiles and their gleaming graduation robes blend in to a collage of the pride and love that my family seems to never run out of.

Home is watching television shows that I would never watch on my own, because my family is all crowded around the couch together. Laugh tracks blending with the clank of computer keys as we all work on separate projects.

Home is the dog who barks at any and every sign of a person on the street and cuddles in to corners in my parent’s bathroom at the noise from a thunderstorm.  She’s getting older, and her legs shake when she gets scared.

Home is the place I go in between all the other places. A pit stop, a resting point, a place to recharge. It’s where I pack and I nap and I take some time to just relax a little bit. Home is always there, even when I leave it—again and again and again and again.

There’s a fountain in the square outside my window that I like to watch at night. Sometimes, but not always, the lights come on, and it gets lit up from below and the water seems to glitter—or so it seems from my vantage point on the fifth floor. I’ve sat on the edge of it more than a few times; waiting for rides, waiting for friends, eating lunch or just reading a book. The sound of the water is soothing, and I like the gentle mist of the drops against my legs.

There are two small black couches in my apartment where I’ve spent unreasonable amounts of time glaring at empty word documents, hoping to somehow levitate the thoughts from my brain on to the laughingly empty page. I stare at the TV, almost always a reality show that my roommates turned on, and try to comprehend the lives of people that I don’t know.

There is a woman who works at the little café in the building where most of my classes are that always calls me ‘honey darling.’ Her accent is not quite southern, but her slang definitely falls somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line.  She never rolls her eyes when I buy the same turkey sandwich and iced tea twice a week, and always asks me if I’m getting enough sleep. I’m not, but it makes me happy that she genuinely cares.

There is one computer downstairs in the library that logs on faster than all the others. It’s in the second to last row, all the way at the end of line, and it still isn’t really that fast. When you sit there you get to watch the people stalking the reference section, always too angry about not being able to find the book they need. Always so excited when they manage to hunt it down.

There is a small room with more windows then walls up on the third floor of the building where I took all my political science classes. The plaque outside the door calls it a “study lounge” but I’ve spent much more time in that room absent mindedly staring out on to the busy streets then with my nose in a book. I almost never see anyone in there, but on the rare occasions that I do we sit in separate corners, in amiable silence. Knowing that there is a place on campus where the noise can’t quite reach.

There is a tree outside the science building that blooms early in the morning and the flowers disappear by lunch. I only get to see them if I'm awake before the campus co

There is one elevator in my building that moves much slower than the other two. Every time I’m stuck in it by myself I dance for a couple of seconds, just because it feels like the right thing to do. Every time I hear the door ding, I stop suddenly so that no one can see my dorky moves. Dancing is necessary sometimes.

There is a fuzzy chair that sat next to the bed in my close friend’s room that I snuggled in to on more movie nights then I can count.  We’d pull up some ridiculous chick flick and order Chinese food and pretend like exams or mean professors or rude classmates didn’t exist. Creating a little bubble of happiness, at least for the length of a Disney movie or an episode of The OC.

There are pictures and posters hung all over the walls of my room. It’s been about 8 months since I moved in here, and hung the first pictures up. Eight months since this place became my place, at least for a little while. I like the pictures because they let me bring a bit of all the other places that I’ve been. I create scrapbook pages large enough to live in when I hang them on my walls.

Tomorrow I leave Salisbury. It’s been a strange year, and a hard one, but I have bits and pieces that I’m more than happy to remember. I’m glad to have these memories. I’m glad to be able to find moments and stories and people to carry with me as I head on to what’s next.