There's no place like home

How about that - a post title from the Wizard of Oz by a girl who lives in Kansas. It had to happen sometime, right? I thought we might just get it out of the way. But it is fitting today because I'm going to talk about Kansas and my home - one in the same.

Driving around in Florida, where I spent my high school years and some other sporadic years, a place that I considered 'home' for quite a while, I felt strangely out of place. The roads I knew by heart seemed laid out in a crazy grid pattern that I just couldn't understand. The city I adored wasn't as bright as I remembered. Wasn't as beautiful. Wasn't as exciting.

It was a lifetime ago, it seemed, that I existed here. I was a different person then. A young girl that I'm not sure I would recognize if I saw. A girl searching and yearning to find just where she fit. For a moment I thought it was there but it really wasn't. I don't match that house, or that school, or that restaurant, or that mall, or that friend, or that boy. I don't belong there. A round peg in a square hole.

It was as clear then as it ever will be that this, this is my home.