Feels Like Home

I had the chance to visit North Carolina for the first time since we moved back north, two years ago. I don't know why I always say that, because I wasn't really visiting the state. I was visiting my sister, but I guess I have so much love for NC that I felt as though I was visiting her too. I can't explain the feeling I got last week every time I drove around the Charlotte area, but every time I hit those familiar roads, the chorus of Feels Like Home by Chantal Kreviazuk ran through my head over and over again. Why? Why would the one place where I lived the shortest amount of time hold so much sentimental value to me? My sisters are no longer that close to Charlotte (though certainly closer than Buffalo), I definitely have more family closer to us in Buffalo, and more friends, but I can't seem to shake the feeling that Buffalo is just another temporary stop. To look at our apartment here one would think we are quite settled, but that is just my extreme hatred of living out of boxes (which I've done many times). I have actually never felt settled in Buffalo. In fact, in a total of five years here I have lived in seven different places.

If it's possible to fall in love with a city, I fell for Charlotte back in high school. My older sister moved down there just north of Charlotte in the late 90s, and the very first time we visited I was hooked. I am a country girl through and through, but Charlotte is the most beautiful city I have ever seen. At that time though I couldn't really tell you why I loved it so much, but I told everyone I knew that someday I would live there. I guess it wasn't surprising to anyone that when a friend of mine called me after I graduated college and told me she had a job opportunity for me in Charlotte, and she needed a roommate, I jumped at the chance.

Charlotte was where I truly learned to live on my own, became an adult, and started my family. It held my first real job, the first apartment I really paid for myself, our very first home as husband and wife, and our first child. Charlotte managed to grab all of those life changing moments in three short years, and Charlotte grabbed my heart. People like to say, "Home is where the heart is," and I agree. Wherever my family is, will always be my heart and therefore, my home, and I don't know what God has planned for our future, but if given the chance, I would return to Charlotte in a heartbeat. If home is where the heart is, then Charlotte will be my forever home.