The best I've ever known.

I’ve sat down to write this every day this week. And every day, I’ve trashed the document I was working on.

But no matter how many drafts sit on my laptop, one sentence has always come back.

My room is empty, my boxes are loaded in a moving truck, my one-way plane ticket is booked. I’ve never left like the way I’m about to leave in a few days. My brain is swirling with a million thoughts, emotions, and a few things I still have left to do before I’m no longer a Florida resident.

I’ve sat down over and over and failed to write this, because I know part of me has not fully comprehended what I’m doing.

I’m taking a risk, I’m doing something not everyone will understand, I’m starting over, I’m hoping it works.

I’m moving. Moving away from what I’ve always called home.

I’ve sat down over and over and failed to write this, because these last 2 years of my life have been nothing like I expected them to be. And I’m not sure I’ve totally processed it all.

But no matter what I’ve processed and what I haven’t, no matter what the last 2 years of my life have been, five words have echoed in each of my attempts at this post:
The best I’ve ever known.

 Home is a million different things, to a million different people.

But to me, home is the best I’ve ever known.

To me, home is a house my parents never got around to giving me a key to, creating a running joke about me always having to come through the garage.

Nonetheless, every time I walk through our garage and into our house, I know I’ll be welcomed in. For the last 2 years, I knew every friend following behind me as I joked about how I didn’t have a key, would also be welcomed in like they lived here.

 And I know all of that will continue to ring true, every time I fly home in the future.

 To me, home has been the friends who offer to pick me up because they know I’m not a fan of driving, home has been the friends who drive from different cities to come visit, home has been sitting on the front porch talking for hours with whoever will sit next to me.

 Home has been my cousins showing up like this is their home too, my grandma barging in even when I warn her beforehand that I’m on an important phone call, and my brother coming home for the holidays, immediately falling back into the habit of making all Mom’s picture frame crooked. Just to drive her crazy.

 Home always will be cheering for the Gators with my dad and reading on the beach with my mom.

 Home has been the walks I take my puppy, Parker, on every morning, on the block I used to ride my bike around as a kid.

 Home is neighbors who feel like family. Who showed up late at night, on one of the worst nights of my life, and held me while I said goodbye to Baxter. Our family’s dog, who was everyone’s favorite for 15 legendary years.

 For the last 2 years, home has been my brother’s old room that I took over as my office. It’s been countless trips to the movies with my parents. It’s been weekends spent riding the horse I’ve called my own since I was 14.

 Home is calls from my best friends, and trips to sleep on their couches for a weekend. Home has been drives to Gainesville and New Smyrna Beach, every chance I get.

 Home is a million different things to a million different people.

But to me, this is it.

I’ve described my life as “a wreck” more times than I can count in the last 2 years.

Because plans fail, people change, life gets more confusing, and time keeps going.

 But this. This home is the best thing I’ve ever known.

 These walls, these people, and these places, have been my joy in the wreckage. They are the reason leaving hurts, and my reasons to come back.

 To the best I’ve ever known,

the support system I feel like I don’t deserve,

and my reasons to keep trying and keep going,

thank you for sticking by me and holding me up.

 I am better because of you.

I am prepared to go find new people and places because of who you made me to be.

 There really is no place like this.

And I will never stop being thankful it’s mine.

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The best I’ve ever known video.