Maybe it’s the dark overcast day that has conjured my melancholy side. Or maybe its the fact that I’ve filled out my last time card. Or just maybe that today, I will miss my last sorority ceremony.

Today I feel like I’m going home. And I feel like crying.

No worries, it’s joyful tears. Being away from my world, the harsh city that saw me grow up, has been difficult. Even when I lived in Corpus I wanted to run back to Houston, not knowing then that three hours away is nothing.

Houston isn’t for everyone. It’s big, sprawling, humid and has a traffic problem that probably will never be solved but it’s home. It’s massive trees canopying over Polk Street. It’s watching the UH vs Rice game with friends on a Saturday afternoon. It’s poetry readings at Borders and NoTsuOh. It’s concerts at the Toyota Center and the Cynthia Wood Mitchell Pavilion. It’s Spanish, it’s English, it’s Spanglish, it’s Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, African dialects — all in the same place they sell a big Mac with Cheese. It’s sorority sisters, the ones you love and like, getting married, having children, and finally growing into their roles of worldly women.

It’s my mom and my sister – what’s left of my family after Oct. 16, 2002.

It’s home, for good or bad, for heat or flood, it’s home and I love it. Can’t get enough.

A high school classmate of mine who lives an hour and a half from Shreveport said that in all her travels there is not a state as friendly as Texas. I agree with her. Yes, there are states and places that are friendly enough but there is something about The Lone Star State that brings me peace, even if I’m now going to live only a couple of minutes from its border.

Shreveport isn’t home. But it’s home for now and its close enough that I’ll be able to attend weddings and birthday parties and yes, even sorority ceremonies, and not feel guilty about missing those important events in life.

You see, what I’ve learned about life so far is very simple — if you can be yourself around people and they still love you, even after you show your ass, that’s where you need to be. Home is where I need to be. It’s all about the people you keep around you.

I don’t know where life is going to take me after Shreveport. I tend to not what to think that far ahead. But I hope that it keeps me close enough to home to always feel safe and to be myself.