home...the spot where my heart is fully content and at ease

Yesterday on my three hour train ride to San Fran (there was a crash) I wasted time looking through my entire Iphoto library. It started the beginning of senior year...mostly homecoming and on. I looked at every single picture, relived every single moment, and relished in the fact that i have the most amazing friends. In 8th grade when I first moved to Summit and even through Sophomore year it wasn't an easy road, I wasn't sure where I fit, not that most of us were, but I felt like I didn't fit. By senior year I found my world. Those girls in all the pictures....Liv, more then anyone else, Steph, Catie, Molly, Alyssa, Kali..they characterize my high school experience. We had our ups and downs but in some shape they had been a part of it since the beginning. Each shaping a piece of my life, going through all the crazy times and all the hard times and all the amazing times, we had a great thing. We got closer and closer, and left each other behind with tears. Now, two months into freshmen year of college I cant wait to see them, to hug them, to be at home with them.

Even more, the pictures pretty much led to my conclusion that senior year, from start to finish was about as good as it could get. Ya, there were some serious hardships, but so many other things color the memories so much brighter. GREAT friends, great memories and a really great relationship to top it all off. Really, it was fantastic, in so many billions of ways, and I'm so happy that I ended it that way, I couldn't ask for anything more. I miss them, I miss them all a whole lot. And as happy as I was, some piece of me was so sad that we are all onto a new stage now, but I know when we go home, so easily, it will all fall right back into place. I cant wait, I really cant wait.

Two weeks, two weeks til I'm home. I love this place, its everything I ever wanted. I have amazing friends, amazing experiences day after day but its a transition, like any other and going home is that much sweeter because of it. Everyday for the last two months I have been learning, taking it all in, bombarded with non stop information, formally or informally delivered about the new world that I call home when Im away for the weekend. It's so fun, so exciting, but equally exhausting. The emotional idea of "home" in my current world is so much stronger then the physical "home", here is home for today, leadville is home forever, someday home will be where my husband is and so on, but the feeling of home, while it may expand it will always be the same.

The feeling of being in the presence of people who know exactly who are, they know exactly where you come from, exactly the life you dream of, and that you know the same. Home is the feeling of not having to teach anybody about yourself, put off a certain image, or learn anything about anyone else. Don't get me wrong we will have experiences to share, but we will be us, just like we always have been and ultimately always will be. Home is being completely comfortable and my heart being completely content, the cozy feeling that takes over your entire body when everything feels just right, even if it's really a mass of confusion and hardship. Home is my best friends voices, their laughs, their hugs and body heat in a setting where personal space is non existent because we are all one, and we share our space just like we share our worlds. My heart soars thinking of this home, and I can just barely imagine how amazing it is to be in this home, the one that will always be consistent, no matter where I lay my head at night, where my toothbrush is or where underwear drawer is. This home is the home that has made me who I am, the one that shaped my world, its in Leadville and its in Summit, sometimes in Boulder and Fort Collins and Glenwood and Tacoma, Washington, this home is all over the world, but the feeling is always the same. And I cant wait to feel it again and love it and grasp it, to bring back to this new world with me, to continue to spread while i teach and learn :)