Missing Home.

The past week has been crazy. In a little less than 48 hours I went from life as completely normal with the prospect of moving sometime in the future to signing a lease and then moving in the next day. I've barely had time to sleep, much less relax and just be.
My apartment is slowly coming together. My room actually looks somewhat like a room now, instead of a giant pile of boxes and a bed. I'm slowly working through a couple of projects to make my room more organized and am waiting patiently for the next week or so to pass until Ikea has its Labor Day Weekend sale and (hopefully) a few of the pieces I want to purchase for my room will be part of that sale. Then all of the boxes (well, most of them) will be emptied or placed upon shelves to be stored up in the closet.
I'm glad to finally be in a new place that is mine where I can do what I want with it, but it's a strange feeling. Maybe it's because the place is still so new. Maybe it's because boxes are still all over the place and there's very little furniture in my bedroom. Maybe it's because it happened so suddenly that I didn't have time to prepare for it like I would've liked. I'm not really sure what it is, but it just doesn't feel like home.
It doesn't have that comfort, coziness and familiarity that a home should. It feels industrial, cold, distant, like something temporary usually feels.
Last night, I went to pick up my cat Nigel. As I sat in my mom's craft room, slowly preparing to take him back to my apartment, I found myself on the verge of tears. It was strange. I didn't know why. All of a sudden I just felt like crying. I felt horrible for taking Nigel away from his home, quite literally the only place he's ever known. And as I sit here and write this, I'm feeling the same way again. My eyes are watering and I'm doing my best to blink back the tears threatening to spill over.
I've never particularly liked change. I hated growing up in a military family because I hated moving so often. If my mom wanted to rearrange my room, she had to start talking to me about it months in advance until I finally thought it was my idea. Otherwise, I would freak out. Change and I have never gotten along as well as we probably should have.
When I went to college, I didn't feel like this. Even when I went to college and lived on campus in my own apartment. I can't help but think that it's maybe because I knew that was temporary. I knew that it wasn't forever and so I knew that I would go back home someday.
Because the fact of the matter is, my parents house is home. I've lived in that house since sixth grade, which is a really long time for a military brat. I'd always heard about having a true home. I met friends who had lived in the same house for their entire lives or something of that sort. And I never knew what that was like until I was 12 years. And here I am, 11 years later, and I'm having to truly leave home for the first time.
There's a finality to it. Unless something crazy happens, I will never live in my parents house again.
Yes, it's been over a year since I graduated from college. In just under two months I will have been working full time for a year. And those things were all strange, to a point, but none of them hit me quite like this has. None of them left me feeling like I'd been spun around 15 times with a blindfold and then told to walk straight. But that's kind of what this feels like.
Adult life is really real now. I'm not a child anymore. I have a big girl job, an apartment, a car, my cat, and bills to pay. And it all just seems to have happened so fast that I wasn't quite prepared for it.
Don't get me wrong. I'm happy. I'm glad to have a new place that's mine. I'm glad to have a job and a car and my cat. But sometimes I can't help but wish that change didn't occur. I can't help but wish that everything could stay the way it was.
More to come on this later.