If there's one trait I admire about myself, it's that I write about everything.

Four years ago, I documented high school graduation; my entries were peppered with phrases like, "everyone from school can kiss my ass." I've calmed down since then, I've learned about humility. I've charted my growth over these four years and I'm amazed that I've emerged at the other end at last, ready to take on the world.

There have been so many people who have entered and exited my life, leaving their footprints as they came and went. I've learned to appreciate my family. A few days ago I learned my grandmother had died. She'd been in a nursing home for a year and had passed in her sleep; it doesn't feel like she's gone and I don't know if it ever will, because I don't see her regularly like I used to. I'm glad I visited her every week when I was home from college. I'm glad I was sad when I heard she had died and not ambivalent. She was the last link I had to my past and now it's just me and the future. Last summer the town bought her house after she was moved into the nursing home and knocked it down to make way for a parking lot. I believe there is a book entitled You Can't Go Home Again, and that encapsulates exactly how I feel--the place I remember as home no longer exists. The people I grew up with are taking their own journeys; the streets I know so well are being renamed. And I'm here in this moment in time, never once imagining that I would reach it, never thinking life would bring me here. I so vividly remember starting college four years ago. I couldn't foresee graduating; I could only picture the month ahead and maybe the month after that. I was unable to comprehend how this institution would suck me in and spit me out, ready to work and pay rent. I thought I'd never be ready to be on my own, but I suppose one just learns to play these roles as they come.

I don't really feel as though I belong anywhere. I identify strongly with where I was raised, but I've carved an existence for myself in this town. It's an achievement I can call my own. I chose to come here, I struggled to make it work. I sat on the orientation bus the first night of college not knowing anyone. I pushed myself to try new activities like join an improv group, I know the trail by the river by heart. Yet I wonder when I'll truly feel like I belong.

And so this summer rolls on, nearing its completion, and in the uncertainty I've become accustomed to there lies a sense of peace. There's a subtle happiness I own each morning, there's some kind of calming force that embalms me. I have my bad days. I honk at uncooperative drivers, I am disgusted when I find a roach. Yet something is drawing me to this place. Something's here.