I cried when I left for college.

I remember telling my mom that our poor senior dog would have no idea what happened to me. Dogs don’t know what a college education is or what it means to move out. To him, I was home one day, and then miraculously gone the next. 

Home, for me, is the suburbs of San Jose. 

It’s a neighborhood called Almaden filled with similar-yet-different two-story houses, drought-friendly “lawns” and the occasional coyote sighting. This is the home I’ve lived in since I was nothing more than a ball of cells. My height markings on the door frame prove my 18 years of existence (and that my height sadly plateaued after turning 13).

By leaving home for college, I mean that I moved 40 minutes up the road. I am no international student traveling thousands of miles away or even an east-coast kid with a three-hour time change. I’ve biked between Stanford and home. It took three hours, but it’s proof that I have not relocated far.

Last fall, I moved into the notorious Crusty Crothers (I am dutifully expected to maintain dorm pride and emphasize that we are NOT crusty). I spent fall quarter meeting some of the 100 plus fellow residents, sprawling out on the floors of various dorm rooms and brushing my teeth next to other sleep-deprived individuals in the morning. I’ve gotten used to the routine of this life in Crothers.

I am ashamed to admit that I call Crothers — in all of its moldy glory — home. 

Sitting at our dining room table over winter break, I remember telling my parents, “I’m going home on Saturday afternoon.”

Home?

Crothers is home?

The realization was jarring. How could I so quickly let a dorm full of strangers, with its shared bathrooms and inconsistent heating replace the house where I learned how to walk and talk? It felt like a betrayal, swapping the home that shaped me for 18 years with a place I had only just begun to settle into.

Home, I’m beginning to realize, is not a singular, unshakeable thing. Some of my fellow Cresidents (Crothers residents) also call Crothers home. Others feel no sort of attachment to the dorm we’ll spend all 36 weeks of freshman year in. For me, Crothers is the place I’ve found comfort, new friends and a sense of belonging.

Loving this new place doesn’t mean I love my childhood home any less. Crothers is no replacement for the luxury of shoeless showers in Almaden, but for now, it’s a place I’m learning, growing and living in. 

They say home is where the heart is. 

If that’s true, I’m going to need another heart.