Home has Potential.

Home. Finally.

The last week at school finished as I expected it to: a frantic, crazy blitz across the finish line. Being a student during finals week and being required to pack your things and make your flight is one thing. Being the RA who has to take finals and convince you that you really need to get packing your things and check to ensure that you really are packing your things and who fines you because you didn't pack your things and then packs the things you left and then cleans the hall and lounge and kitchen and packs her things and THEN leaves, is quite another. :)

I have a great sister RA who helped immensely. Bethany, I've written about her before. She's one of my people. Bethany and I vacuumed ferociously and took out carts full of trash. After we were cleared to check out, B and I stood at the corner of our floors. We had a moment there, and time waited for us. She on West's side, me on North's, look from our empty floors to each other and back again. "This is sad," I said. We sighed, and touched each others elbows (something we've strangely adopted as our form of loving physical touch). We sighed again. I teared up. "I'm not saying goodbye to you now, Ame," B said emphatically. "Get outta here," I retorted. And we went our separate ways to our separate rooms one last time.

Later we said goodbye in the plaza to her family, but this is the moment I will cherish.

I said goodbye to Charity up in Steph's apartment after we had laid around and talked about nothing and everything for a few hours. Again.

I said goodbye to Audrey in my room, refusing to say goodbye and pretending like it was just another couch conversation.

I said goodbye to Steph before we headed for bed - I slept in her apartment because, well, my floor was empty and I'm scared as a five year-old on a floor full of empty rooms.

I said goodbye to Katelynn after breakfast at my new favorite Chicago breakfast nook, Orange. It seemed unreal, like we weren't really saying goodbye, like we'd go on being friends forever. I think we will.

Sunday morning came and I said goodbye to my youth group girls at church and Angela in the plaza. Ang was the goodbye I was dreading most. See, I don't know when I'll see her again. B I'll see at her wedding, Charity I'll see there, Steph is here next year, I'm staying with Katelynn when I visit in July. But Ang? I don't know when our paths will cross again. I'm sure they will. It just seems like a looming and foggy unknown journey until they do. I hugged her in the plaza and smelled her hair (I'm weird, I know, but Ang's smell is one I could recognize anywhere. It's the smell of a homey room to me, the smell of a good conversation about to happen. It's not bad or good. It's just ... Ang.) And said goodbye. I got in my car and cried.

I made the four hour trip with no back window in view and a refrigerator poking me in the back of my head. At one point I was so tired I thought I might have to pull over and take a nap, but I made it. And finally, I'm home.

My heart is a little sore this morning from all the rending yesterday. But healing will come. Home has the potential of being a healing place.

I say "potential" because it's not always healing. I don't mean it's destructive, just that I've lived here in many broken days. High school was a broken time in which lots of areas of my life were throbbing with pain, decaying with time. And I'm not who I used to be. Yes, I'm still broken, but differently. The temptation is to fit the old mold, the sway back into the vintage self of confusion, anger, gluttony, and bitterness. That is the temptation.

But it is not my hope.

I can be different, new, rebuilt here. I don't know what it will take. I don't know how to start. But home has potential.