"I am SD and SD is home. I am home and that brings me so much peace."

You know I felt very weird coming back to San Diego this summer. Since going away to UW I have definitely changed and I have grown a lot. I was hanging out with my dear friend Lisa and we were talking about life, and she asked me if I thought I had made the right choice to go to UW. I told her that I knew I made the right choice because I was happier than I was two years ago, at some point I had to let the wonder go and really embrace what I have in Seattle.

This past year I was in a really good place. I am more confident, happy, and I am surrounded by some very amazing people who have pushed me harder than anything I have experienced before. As happy as I was there, that left how I would feel coming back to San Diego in question. 

As a military brat I have constantly struggled defining where and what ‘home’ was. I was born in Georgia and from there moved around about every four years. Finally my family moved to San Diego, and we have been here the longest out of any other place I have lived. But, when you think about it I haven’t even lived here for more than half of my life.

I think lacking that sense of stability of what home is, really bothered me in the sense of security. A lot of my friends would talk about going back home where they were born and raised, or have spent the majority of their life, and I was still having an internal conflict of what that meant to me. 

For a while I would describe home as where my heart was, which you can obviously point to my family, but the past few weeks and conversations I’ve had with people who have known me for the past 8 years, have made me rethink my thoughts on what home is to me.

Alongside my family, I have begun to accept San Diego as home.

When it comes down to it, I am a byproduct of this place in almost every single aspect. Of course I will always have a soft spot for the places I lived and especially Georgia, heck you might hear my southern drawl in certain words I speak (inside joke circa 2011: “I read…”) and look at me weird when I refer to something differently than you, but that isn’t enough to define what home is or isn't.

I have gone through so much here with salt water lips and the costal breeze whipping across my face and it has all taught me how to love and live the way that I do now.

I am San Diego by the way I act, think, advocate, dress, enjoy my free time, and my love of wearing flip- flops as much as I can. I am SD by the way I maneuver the path down to No Surf, and my Ortiz burritos. I am SD by the way I fell in love with wall ball when I moved here, the way I fell in love with the spanish language, the way that I know these streets unlike any other,  the way I will wake up when no one else is out just to catch the sunrise at the cliffs, and it brings me the most clarity. And the list goes on…

But more importantly, I am SD because of the people who have granted me with some of the best memories and relationships I will go on to tell my grandchildren about.

At Jay and Brittany’s wedding I had a core group of people there (minus karlin and some non-band kids), who have seen me at my lows, who have seen the way I look in the wee hours of the morning after a band competitions (which is rough), and who I have the weirdest yet most comfortable relationships with. 

On the way home from the wedding I was just happy. I had time to catch up and laugh with these people who I will always think and care about to some capacity, no matter what. On the long drive home I was just buzzing. Earlier my good friend Jake and I were a little anxious to see how this night would go and it exceeded our expectations for sure. And when trying to figure out why, this is what I came up with: We all had to spend so much time together and got to know each other well during the peek of our hormonal and emotional drama filled teenage years, and have seen each other through ugly times, but since moving past that and focusing on what is in front of us now, we can bypass the awkward small- talk and just fall into things like it was 2008 or 2010 or 2012… It felt comfortable and right.

My heart was so happy and it still tingles a little bit. Being here gives me a little something that Washington, or Hawaii, or any other place I’ve been to, will never do. Obviously there will be exceptions of people who I have met and will meet down the road, but this place and these people will be who I smile the most with when I see them in the coming years, and what I will reminisce upon the most when I think of my childhood.

I have a long way until I really have a grip on who I am, but if there is one thing this trip has taught me…it is that I am SD and SD is home. I am home and that brings me so much peace, no matter where my future leads me.

To my past teachers, old coaches, teammates, band kids, and friends beyond: Thank you for bringing me home. 

Much Love.

Here are some mems that make this home: