Can You Really Just Click Your Heels and Say "There's No Place Like Home?"

June 15th, 2007 at 09:36pm Jessica Andrews 393

In the past year I have been asked the same question easily over 100 times. The question though asked in a variety of ways usually translates into: why did you choose Indiana University?

What they were really asking was, why did you choose to move from such a beautiful place, like Aspen, to Indiana?

The truth is that I have never given a straight answer.

After graduation, every kid has that pit-of-the-stomach feeling, an urge to break free, fly away from the nest, or just get out of the house.

For many of us that means going off to college.

I will never forget packing my bags, waving goodbye to friends and family….. or all the money I surprisingly got at my graduation party. Then that day, driving to the airport and taking the first few steps into freedom.

I must admit that my first year of college seemed to run right by. Looking back on it, even after only one month, I can only remember the fun parts. Meeting new friends, taking classes that I was actually interested in and overall just moving to a state that doesn’t contain one foothill in comparison to the Rocky Mountains.

At first I really thought I would be homesick, missing friends, family- the literally picture perfect view of Snowmass Mountain from my bedroom patio.

All I can say is that it never happened.

In fact, the first time I really realized that I was going to have to move from Bloomington Indiana back home for the summer wasn’t until the week before finals. Some of my friends were renting a min-storage space for the summer and asked if I wanted to pitch in. I told them that I honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.

No, it wasn’t until I took my first few steps off the airplane and onto Colorado soil that I realized I was home.

And it wasn’t until I reached the driveway to my house that I realized that that home would never be the same.

It wasn’t my room or having my car back again, or seeing my pets for the first time that threw me through a loop. It was a 2 by 2 foot ‘For Sale’ sign that stood in front of my parents house. Because, after ten years of living with the same address on the same road, the house I grew up in, ‘we’ or better yet ‘they’ were moving?

It took a few weeks for the idea to really settle in. That, along with the culture shock that came along with moving from two completely different places.

After going my whole life through the Aspen School System and graduating from Aspen High I never doubted that I was a local. There was no question that I belonged here. Now, that has all changed.

I can still walk down the streets the same or go to a favorite café and see people I know, I still know of all the best places to park in town or where to go hiking on the weekends. But there is a missing element that I don’t think will ever be restored.

It is only now that I am coming to terms with the fact that home will never be the same.

Entry Filed under: Aspen, Colorado, Travel, Aspen Life Post