Background.

When I was in college, and I came home for the holidays/summers, I had a habit of driving around my home town at night. I've always been a night owl, and I usually didn't feel like going to bed when everyone else did, so I'd just drive around. I think I did it out of restlessness. Sometimes I felt like getting on I-90 and driving east until I found something interesting. When I drove past the freeway at night I always thought it would be kind of cool to just get on it and drive until morning... call my family from some pay phone in a tiny town in Montana and tell them where I was and that I didn't know when I'd be back. I always thought that would be kind of liberating.

One day, I got my wish. My LSAT score wasn't good enough to get me into the public school here, but I figured I had a decent shot at another really good public school. This school wait-listed me in the winter of 2003, so it seemed like they were interested. I found out they gave preference to state residents, so I looked up the residency statutes. I figured out how to get residency in a year, then I got on the freeway and I drove east.

I was able to transfer there with my job (which wasn't hard... retail workers are completely fungible), get an apartment, meet the girlfriend, fall in love, and get myself wait-listed and rejected by the public school in my new state of residency. This of course, was soul-crushing. Rejection meant telling the girlfriend's family, my coworkers, my family, my friends, and most of all, the girlfriend, that I had invested a year of my life trying to accomplish something, and failed miserably. It meant that I was basically in the same position I was a year earlier, except now I had an awesome girlfriend and had to leave her. This was pretty much the low-water mark of my adult life. Luckily, my safety school still admitted me, and gave me the same small scholarship they had offered me the year before. So reluctantly, I got on the freeway, and I drove east.

When I got there, I figured I'd already sacrificed a year of my life, signed on for six figures worth of student loans, and left an amazing woman to give myself a shot at this law school thing, so I'd best make the most of it. This seems to have lit a fire under my ass, because I did well. Well enough to transfer. The school that wait-listed me twice? The FINALLY admitted me... as a transfer. But by then another school had admitted me, one which I would've gnawed off my own hand to attend. So I got on the freeway and I drove west! And to top it all off, girlfriend and I decided we could handle a long distance relationship until I was done with school (especially since we were now only three hours apart).

After this year, I'll be driving west again... but not very far. As of this June, it'll have been 4 years since I first drove east... and it looks like I won't ever be coming back for any length of time. Now when I come home I still drive around my old home town late at night. For some reason driving by all of my friend's old houses and the places I used to hang out at comforts me. It's weird. I get all nostalgic. This is the place where I grew up, and pretty much every street triggers some kind of very fond memory of my adolescence. Tonight I drove past the house where I grew up, the houses of about 5 of my really good friends from high school, my old middle school, my favorite curvy road (it's really fun to drive on it), and a couple of my old places of employment.

Until tonight, my nostalgia was always sort of heavy and sad. I accepted the fact that I'll never work or live around my home town a long, long time ago, but that doesn't mean I don't miss it. Tonight's drive was different though. This was the first time I've been home since I accepted my job offer. Tonight I drove around knowing that I'll have a definite home to go back to after this school year. I'm no longer a transient who's lived in 5 different cities in the last 5 years, I'm a guy who knows where he'll be living for the next 5 years, maybe even 10, hell maybe even 50, and I'm pretty sure I know who I'll be living with. I think that colored tonight's drive. I think I missed the idea of having a home more than I missed living in the home town itself. Tonight I drove around my old home town and I was able to simply appreciate it for what it is, for what it was, for what it did, for how it shaped me, and for the memories I have of it. I just smiled as I drove around and felt the memories ebb and flow through and around me. I didn't feel the sense of loss that I usually feel when I think about the good ole' days... I think it's because I finally know where my new home is now. I don't feel like the center has dropped out of me every 12 months when my lease is up and I have to move to a new state.

In 2003 I set out to scratch that itch that had been bugging me since roughly 1998, and I drove east... the goal of course was to attend law school, but I also just wanted to find out what was out there. And I drove east... and I found it:

It's home.