Who says you can't go home?

With summer starting within a couple of days, I figured it was appropriate to make note of something I've been feeling pretty strongly these past couple of weeks. It seems like the places that are the most like home to me are the places I've sought out myself and/or created for myself. I don't mean to diss my family. My family is lovely, and I am certainly looking forward to seeing them. ALL of them!
But it seems as though I've felt the most welcome and been the most accepted in places where they know me and me alone/first. I haven't been very good at keeping in touch with high school friends. Many of us have kind of grown apart, or I've been the only one keeping the friendship alive. The place where I'm working is incredibly cliquish. I'm not trying to whine or be bitchy, but it really annoys me when it seems as though I'm making all of the effort to reach out and be friendly and no one reciprocates. I know I'm not shy anymore, and I do my best to remember important things about people. The weird thing is, when I'm back up north, I feel as though I'm just putting on a performance for people. It just feels kind of wrong...shouldn't your home be the first place where you feel like...well...you? I can't discuss many of my activities around certain relatives or high/grade school friends and certainly not around coworkers. If I told some of my coworkers that I was the Feminist Majority co-president for next year or that I participated in the Day of Silence, you can bet that they'd go out of their way to avoid me. If I told some extended relatives (not immediate ones...more like the ones you don't see as often) or high/school friends about the Ayyam-i-hah party I went to in February, they'd look at me like I was speaking Latin or something (although, technically the word "Ayyam-i-hah" is Farsi, not Latin). Even my own parents have asked me to tone down what I talk about, like my advocacy work or declaring. Topics like those are outside of the mainstream and outside of people's comfort zones, I guess.

Maybe I'm overreacting.

I just think that my experience in college has completely made up for all of that. Here, people know me for me. Not because they know my parents and by default know me because I'm their kid. Not just because I've lived there 10+ years. Not just because I obligatorily have to go there. People like me because they want to, not because they have to. I know that I'm not the most "ideal" friend--I can be a pretty polarizing and opinionated individual, and I can be a total bitch when I want to be (hell, I used that in one of my campaign speeches! I said, "I can totally bitch at people to make them vote. I'm a real live bitch!" when I ran for outreach director. I lost, but I did make 'em laugh!). But the communities I've either enjoyed being a part of or formed have all accepted me for me. Not for anything else. None of my professors know the rest of my family. They like my work because I do my best and it shows. They respect me because I put in a lot of hard work and talk my head off in discussion section (it's not unusual for a professor to tell me to let someone else talk for a change!). When I started attending devotions, I didn't know anyone there when I went the first time. But the people in the ECI cluster like me because we've taken the time to get to know each other. I didn't become friendly with them because they knew one of my relatives or lived near me, and they're just as nice to me as a declarant as they were to me as a seeker. Every club that I've joined is accepting of me because they know me and they know my work. I felt more like myself among my monologists (and that WAS a REAL performance!). At the Spring Social in April, I had a blast going around the teamster hall and introducing myself to all the other activists and talking with them. (And I didn't know anyone outside the planning committee! By the end, I had met all these cool new activisty people, and they gave me great suggestions for getting my word out!)

They say that home is what you make of it. I say it's what you make for yourself. I've found so much more respect and acceptance when I've been the one initiating it or making the opportunities for myself. While I am certainly looking forward to vacation and my lovely family and of course the fabulous concerts, I also am looking forward to the next school year.