homebody

I like to be at home.

You can argue that this is because the majority of the time I spend away from home is spent at school or work, and there is some validity to that particular line of reasoning.

But it's more than that.

I have no problem working, but can't I just do it at home?

I enjoy learning, but can I learn from my living room?

All day long, I yearn to be at home with my things and my people and my comfort zone. On particularly bad days, I count down the hours until I can enter my apartment and toss my backpack on the floor and curl into a ball on my bed.

Long days on campus exhaust me, mentally and physically. When I'm forced to remain on campus until a project is completed, my whole soul chants I just want to be finished, and a portion of that desire is because I'm sick and tired of whatever I'm working on. But embedded in that phrase is always an echo of I just want to be home.

Home is where I can breathe properly and where it's okay to get emotional over something silly or dance like a maniac in the kitchen to the Backstreet Boys or have a total meltdown. Home is where I don't feel like I have to twist or bend or mold who I am into somebody I'm not. Home is where I can wear my pajamas at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and still be relatively socially acceptable.

I used to think that my tendency to be an extreme homebody is a purely negative piece of my personality. And though I recognize that breaking out of my comfort zone more than I do is a beneficial activity, I also believe that my propensity to want to be at home speaks volumes about the home I grew up in and the feelings I have toward places of living.

Growing up, I knew that home was a safe place. It's where I would always be loved and accepted and cared for. It was where the people I care the most about were. Home was where I laughed until I cried and played silly games and made memories. It was where I learned to pray and to love the scriptures. Home was a refuge; I remember those rough middle and high school days when I would bottle up emotions and bind a wounded heart all day at school only to come home and have all my vulnerability and hurt spill out into my mother's waiting arms and heart. Home is where I could be a mess and for some reason, I would be loved anyway.

Because of how I grew up, I have a reverence for home. I associate it with warmth and love and security. And that's why I prefer to be at home. That's why I find myself upset and uncomfortable when I don't know when I'll next step over the threshold to my apartment. That's why the very act of coming home instills in me a sense of renewal and peace.

Someday I'll be a wife and a mother, and I'll have a more permanent home with my family. And I want my husband and my children to have the same tender feelings about home as I do. I want them to know that home is a safe place, a loving place, a happy place. I want them to know that despite petty arguments and sibling scuffles, home is the place where they will always be loved and always be comforted.

I want them to like being at home, just like I do.