I never meant to be at home this long. I thought after college I’d come home for a few months and then be off, moving into a apartment with a job. God had other plans for me. I got sick. I had to lose my job. I couldn’t take care of myself and I found myself on the couch for two years, then I found myself working part time, adding on hours slowly, unable to pay for a place yet, not fully well either.

So the story went, flash forward three years from graduation and I am finally working full time, still not a hundred percent well, but buying a house with my best friend and soon to be husband. But I’m 24 and I’m still at home. It brings a lot of millennial jokes to the surface, but I don’t mind. I was sick. I needed my parents. I love them and living with them has never been a bother, but it’s time to move on.

I’ve been excited about the move for months now. All smiles and laughter. A chance to make my own home just how I want it. Leveling up, moving to bigger things. It hadn’t quite hit me that this month will be my last month ever living in my childhood home. I’ve lived here my whole life, minus brief periods in a dorm room, but even then, I came home for summer and holidays. My room was still in my room. It didn’t feel like a big change. This is and its bittersweet. Some of my best memories are in these walls and up and down these streets. When I was a kid my whole world existed in these few blocks and it was wonderful, beautiful, and truly everything a childhood should be.

And somehow, even though my parents will continue living here, I feel like I’m leaving something bigger than this house behind. Perhaps I’m coming off age a second time. Going from young adult to plain adult, shedding it all at last, like a butterfly from a cocoon. Only my childhood and early twenties aren’t something to be discarded. So I find myself longing in the strangest way. I know this is just how change works, you’re sad to see things end even if you’re excited for the next chapter, I just didn’t expect it to hit so hard and so suddenly. It makes me want to cherish this month instead of racing though it despite my excitement.

But I guess in the end, it’s time for me to start packing. It’s a big world out there and it’s time for me to step into it.