Leaving Home

It occurs to me, that for someone who has lived on three continents and who has seen more countries than he has seen years of life, that I've only ever left home once before. When I was about twelve, we moved to Singapore after living in Arizona for my entire memory. After a year in Singapore, we spent two years living in Beijing. During that time, for a school assignment for all us expat kids, we had to write about our "home of heart." I'd always thought of Arizona that way, even though my family was with me where I was traveling, and I had no relatives, (but close friends) there.

We went back to Arizona, to a completely different part of the city, but it still felt like home. The smell of the desert perhaps. I graduated from high school, and went to ASU. Although I was living on campus, out of my parent's house, the physical separation from my parents house was simply a reflection of my growing independence. If I had been living at home, I don't think I would have felt any differently. Of course I loved and continue to love my family, but I was already beginning to spin my own course. I was ready to go, and besides, we were all still together in Phoenix. When they left for other parts, I missed them, but I was the one who stayed at "home."

The world rolls on and gradually we all spun our separate paths. They've all come back to Phoenix in one way or another, but we're all different people than who we were. Arizona has stayed the same, at least in the ways that make it meaningful to me, and it seems like the most stable thing in this world.

But Phoenix has changed. I've changed. It seems to me that this is the right time to leave, or to risk standing forever at the desert's edge. I'll miss it, but you have to leave home sometime.