It has been said “the best part of living in a place like Manhattan is leaving it.” Whoever said that must have been a transplant. With all the things that make this city great, for those that didn’t grow up here, and sometimes even for those that did, it can be all too easy to find reasons why one would want to leave. It’s crowded, it smells, it’s expensive, people you don’t know yell at you sometimes. Just to name a few.

But even these aren’t the best reasons for getting out of the city. The greatest and strangest realization about leaving New York is recognizing the rest of the world functions just fine without it.

After spending some time amongst the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple, New York has a way of creeping into your mind as the center of the universe. Imagining this attitude is much easier when you remember Beyonce lives here. Everything happens here. Everyone lives here.

Arriving in Chicago, I was flooded with the familiar: my family, my friends, my room. Everything was there. Everyone was there.

Not only was everything functioning without me, it was thriving. My little sisters fully submerged in their high school social lives, my mother taking on the world’s problems one math problem at a time, my friends forging ahead in the uncharted waters of their early 20s finding apartments and new jobs, and somehow, I was not an essential part of any of it.

This revelation wasn’t entirely new. After all, I was the one who left, and despite my ever flickering mind, I was doing pretty fine myself. I love New York. I love the feeling of limitless possibility whenever I leave my apartment. I love accidentally walking 8 miles in a day. I love getting 99 cent pizza literally whenever and wherever I want (please do not confuse this Chicago pizza is better no debate there).

But I do not love the separation between me and the majority of people I love. I definitely do not love the idea of them living their lives, undergoing different landmark experiences with there to go through it with them. The south suburbs of Chicago hold 21 years of my life. The idea that I and it can go one without each other feels oddly like a betrayal.

Thoughts like these almost make me open my currently dead laptop and book the next (and cheapest) flight home, but then I am reminded of my roommate, my church, and my favorite deli worker on the corner of 104th and Columbus, and I realize maybe that plane ticket isn’t the answer to all my questions.

Distinguishing between the two places is hard. I was talking with a friend the other day and referred to my house in Flossmoor as “home home.” Somehow the word’s repetition made my Chicago home more legitimate. After all, I loved the the majority of my life, random people smile at you sometimes, the streets are clean.

Maybe my problem (aside from my whining), isn’t these places themselves, maybe the problem is my definition of home. Maybe home isn’t supposed to be one place that satisfies you completely. Maybe it is the complete culmination of people, places, and things, the ultimate noun if you will.

Maybe the way to think about home is as simple as my friend’s response “Your home is here. This is where you live now.”

But maybe the most important realization about home is regardless of where you roam, whether that be down the street from where you grew up, in a whole new city, or halfway across the world, your home can no longer simply be the place where you grew up. Your home is something you have to make for yourself.

So far, I am happy with the one that I’ve got.