Home is where the heart is

I'd always thought that moving away from home would be different than this. I wonder. I don't necessarily miss my parents or my brother or my pets or my house. They've always been there, so perhaps it's that I can't comprehend them not being there, and therefor do not miss them. I don't miss my friends; I miss being with friends. I miss the idea of Columbia, of being familiar with it, but I don't miss the town itself. I hardly ever call home. It's not because I don't want to, though, it's because I never think to. Then again, they rarely call me. Perhaps it just never occurs to either of us.

I had expected the process of leaving home (physically and emotionally) to be a long, drawn out one. I expected a long period of adjustment where I would really feel lonely and miss home. But it was more like an instant in which the string that attached me to my home was cut, and that was it. It hurt for that instantaneous point in time and then stopped. I'm still aware that the string has been cut, I just don't feel it anymore. Not being at home wasn't as weird as being somewhere else is.

And now the closing quote for the day, thanks to Modest Mouse:

"Well that is that and this is this, will you tell me what you saw,
And I'll tell you what you missed, when the ocean met the sky.
You missed when time and life shook hands and said goodbye.
When the Earth folded in on itself
And said, 'Good luck. For your sake I hope Heaven and Hell
Are really there, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
You wasted life, why wouldn't you waste death?' "