A turkey to welcome me home

I flicked off the light. \nAnxious to begin my winter break back in Indianapolis, I shut my door swiftly and gallivanted over to the elevator. Or rather, I gallivanted as much as was possible while carrying two suitcases. \nWhen the elevator doors parted, I encountered a friend of mine, who was carrying a duffle bag as big as God. His beady eyes were barely visible from behind his monstrous handlings. \n"You going home, too?" he asked me. \n"Yep, home sweet home."\nImmediately after the words left my lips, I began to wonder. If I was, in fact, going home, where had I been? As the elevator went down, my paranoia went up. Was Bloomington not my home? Is college, in essence, nothing more than a Holiday Inn with homework?\nA sign in the Read Center lounge says, "Welcome to Your Home." But how are we supposed to feel at home in the dorms while showering in flip-flops and having to poop next to a stranger? \nAfter questioning my wavering residency, I was left with the same ironic sense of disorientation I had felt during summer orientation. I felt lost.\nCollege is, undeniably, a time when people feel misplaced. Students become lost in their morals, their sexuality and their emotions -- not to mention the floors in the Union (which floor is that freakin' cookie shop on anyway?). \nBecause college is a transitional phase, a crucial layover on the flight to our future, there is a lessened sense of stability -- not only emotionally, but environmentally as well. \nAfter moving many a line of longitude and latitude away from "home," we abandon not only our mommas, who were always there to bring us Robitussin, but also where we grew up. Though our hometown has become part of who we are, coursing through our veins like a stream of geographical blood cells, we are forced to uproot our roots. Yet we bring with us old keepsakes and pictures of our dogs as Band-Aids of nostalgia. \nThere is a famous saying about the concept of home: "Home is where the heart is." In other words, "home" isn't so much a building or dwelling, but a state of mind. The meaning of "home" can shift depending on where you feel comfortable.\nI realized this when I came back to school after break. While walking down my hallway across the hideously colored carpeting, approximating the shade of booger, I felt a sense of ease surrounding me. The air smelled familiarly like a warm sock and Febreezed-over marijuana scent. I passed the same blood-smeared handprint that had been there since the first week of school, on which someone had cleverly penciled feet and a wattle to make a turkey. The sweet sound of my next-door neighbor's rap serenade, "Bitches and Hos," lingered deafeningly in the corridor. \nI arrived at my dorm room, and the same Star of David emblem, which someone had drunkenly carved into my door, was there to Jewish-ly greet me once again, like a big Chanukah hug. And I must admit, there is comfort in that Star of David, that blood-smeared hand, that smell of sock, those "bitches" and those "hos." They all will have left vibrant imprints in my memory, like fossils in time.\nWhen I opened the door, the room inside was shrouded in darkness, save for the tiny Thundercats nightlight, illuminating the corner of my couch. \nSo, I flicked on the light.\nAnd as I took in a deep breath from inside my dorm room, I finally realized I was home.