I’m going back to my hometown this week, and I’ve been carrying a strange mix of emotions. Homecomings have a way of forcing you to measure who you were against who you’ve become. They’re less about returning to a place and more about confronting the version of yourself that never really left. There was a time when thinking about Texas would make me overwhelmingly homesick. I missed my friends with an ache that could bring me to tears. Texas is where the people I love still are. It’s where my family is, where lifelong friendships were built, where I experienced the first real love of my life, where countless milestones unfolded, and where the first twenty-four years of my life quietly shaped me into the person I am today. Every habit, every memory, every piece of my identity has roots there. I wouldn’t be me without Texas.
But somewhere along the way, the feeling shifted.
When I think about going back now, I don’t feel the same pull. The love is still there, but the longing isn’t. I no longer find myself wishing I had never left. Instead, I find myself grateful that I did. That realization comes with an unexpected sense of guilt. We grow up believing home is supposed to be permanent, that we’re meant to miss it forever. But sometimes home evolves. Sometimes it stops being a place you belong to and becomes a place that belongs to your history. I’ll always love Texas because it’s woven into who I am. But I don’t know if I’ll ever look at it as my home again.
New York isn’t perfect either. It’s exhausting, expensive, chaotic, and unforgiving. It asks more of you than most places ever will. But somewhere in the middle of all that noise, I’ve found a version of myself I never knew existed. The serotonin this city provides is unlike anything I’ve experienced. Even on the hard days, matter of fact especially on the hard days, there’s an energy that makes the struggle feel meaningful. There’s something oddly comforting about walking through the city after a disappointing day, surrounded by millions of people chasing something of their own. The lows don’t feel isolating, they feel shared. New York somehow makes heartbreak, failure, and uncertainty feel like they’re all part of the admission price. The misery I experienced in Texas felt different. It was quieter. It settled into the routine of everyday life until it became difficult to separate the place from the feeling. It lingered. Here, the lows pass through you. There, they stayed. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe that’s just who I was when I lived there. Places aren’t solely responsible for our happiness or our pain, but they become inseparable from the versions of ourselves that existed within them. I think that’s one reason why this trip feels so emotionally complicated. I’m not returning to the place I left, because that place doesn’t exist anymore. My friends have changed. My family has changed. The streets are the same, but I’ll walk them as someone entirely different. You can be endlessly grateful for where you came from while knowing your life exists somewhere else. Contentment and resentment are separated by such a thin line. For a long time, I wasn’t sure which side of it I stood on. I resented Texas for making me feel stuck, and I resented New York for demanding so much from me. But somewhere between leaving one place and building a life in another, resentment slowly transformed into gratitude. Texas gave me my foundation, but New York gave me my wings.
Now, when I think of home, I realize it isn’t defined by where I spent the most years. It’s the place that continues to ask me to grow. It’s where I feel most alive, even when life feels difficult. Texas will always have my heart, but New York is where it’s still beating.
literally same bruh