I always told people I was going home.

This is what I would tell people when they asked what my plans were for Thanksgiving or Christmas or if they asked me what I was doing a particular weekend and it involved me going back to Wisconsin.

"I'm going home."

And for years, this was true. There's that whole concept of where is home when you are in college? You know, if you go to college and then go back to live with your parents in the summer, where is home? Obviously, it's where you will be moving back. It's the same when you only live in a city for a only a few years. Like, when I moved to the city almost seven years ago to go to college. I literally only knew one person and that was barely. I lived in this shack of a studio(seriously, ask my parents/friends/brother about this place and they will all use the same word "Shack" with multiple adjectives such as "Shitty" or "INSANELY tiny" or "Unbelievably too expensive for what it was") and to me, it was never home. Home was when I got to go back and see all my close friends who were still in high school or my family who still lived in the same houses in the same cities or, well, who were still alive. Home wasn't a place where the kitchen and the bed were within feet of each other. Home wasn't neighbors who often got so high they would flush pizza down the toilet which would cause a flood and leakage from their apartment above me to my apartment below them which would eventually destroy everything in my apartment from books to photographs to my writing and photography portfolio to my futon bed that wasn't that great in the first place, but wasn't much better when it smelled like toilet water that had filtered through years of old ceiling material.

Anyway, the city wasn't home.

But things change.

I spent almost a week in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. At my parent's house. Their house. Not mine. This may have sunk in a bit more over the years when the colors of my old bedroom went from blue to flower wallpaper and when the decorations went from Alanis Morissette posters to teddy bears. This may have sunk in a bit more when my brother moved out a few years ago. Or even more when my last neighbor who I had grown up with moved to Spain to study. Or even in moments, like last night, when I actually braved it out to a bar or two with an old friend and had high school classmates who hadn't seen me in years come up and re-introduce themselves in flirty ways thinking I was new to the city in Wisconsin. Things have been adding up over the years.

But what really made it sink in is when I got off the train tonight. It was a mix of snow and rain. The Chicago wind slapped my face the minute I left the station. I even think I stepped in a puddle when I rounded a corner heading to catch the bus. The tall buildings were all in their right places. The el train rumbled by making the same old screeching noise. The cabs honked and sped around other cars. Unconsciously, I took in a giant breath. It smelled like winter. It smelled like Chicago. It smelled like home.