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I have about five blog posts written. I just don't know how to finish them all off. I even had this problem in college when writing papers. How do you finish a post when the story is just beginning? Hmm. Anyway, here's one:

They say “Home is where the heart is.” I prefer to think of home as a location. If that is the case, home for me is Jennings, Louisiana. It’s a small town 3 hours south of where I’m sitting now and 30mins from the Gulf. That’s home. I was born there although I have no family there, I lived there until I was 13. My father got a job in Jennings back in 1982 and so my mother and he moved from his hometown (about 40mins away) to Jennings. My mother somehow decided in the late 90s that she wanted out of South Louisiana. She never did like in there. She’s much more of a North Louisiana kind of lady (read: Protestant).

So in 2001, we moved. We moved here to Shreveport. I didn’t want to move. I loved Jennings. It was all I had ever known. I did understand why we had to move, but we did. Since moving to Shreveport a lot has gone on in my life. Just think of your life from the ages of 13-24. It’s all the typical stuff of coming-of-age. Shreveport is a nice town for that kind of stuff. I loved high school and I went to college about an hour from here. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. That being said it still doesn’t feel like home. And neither does Jennings, for that matter. I’ve been back twice, maybe three times since we moved. And the only place that truly feels like home there is being in front of the house I lived in when I was there. I miss that place on a daily basis, but other than that, Jennings offers me no sense of home.

On my last count I think I’ve lived under eight roofs while living in Shreveport. I don’t think you can have a single place feel like home when you’ve lived in eight different homes in 10.5yrs. The closest residence that felt like home to me was the house my mother lived in when she and my father were divorced. I loved that little house and wish they still lived in it, but once they got remarried, they decided to buy another house. Despite the rollercoaster of a personal life, Shreveport has been good to me.

Like I said, it’s a great city to come-of-age in and I’m glad I did it here, but still… no sense of home. I’ve made some great, lifelong friends here, but I have nothing that keeps me here. I find Shreveport offers me little in life opportunities.