The real definition of home away from home,

I was in sophomore year when I started loving Tuscarora like I loved a pair of old jeans or my worn out stuffed animals. There is a smell that hits you when you walk into the Hillside manor that always bombards me with memories. I came home from camp that year and could still smell Hillside on my blanket. My eyes welled up with tears. The day coming back from camp is hard because you are as far away from going back as you will ever be.

I was eighteen when I found my second home away from home. It was my white washed dorm room in Houghton. It was thr first time I could leave something in one place and it would be there when I returned. My DVD's remained unscratched and my clothes stayed folded. It was luxurious to a girl who had always shared a bedroom with two younger sisters. I loved it.

Neither of these two places compare to the location I am homesick for now.

I emerged from the underground for the first time and my first breaths of London air were a memory I didn't think I would hold onto. I know exactly what I was wearing, I remember dragging my 80 pound suitcase down Highbury Fields. London fit me like a glove from the start. And beneath the surface of the modern trendy city there were echos of the ghosts of London's past.

I didn't expect this. No one warned me. No one tells you that you will lie awake at night months after coming back thinking about the planters in front of the flats across the street. No one mentions that you will taste cadbury spread in the morning even as you try to forget. I didn't think my hands would still itch for a tea cup after dinner.

I didn't know London was breaking my heart. I didn't know I had the world within reach until it was gone. Now I feel tied down and lost. I feel far from home. I want to cry at times for no reason, and then I realize I'm crying for London. The city I'm too far from. The city, that though I didn't know it, stole my heart away from New York. If only for a little while.