One reason as to why I don't want to graduate yet is because I don't want to go home. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't love my parents or love my hometown, in fact I think that I'll never get over my love affair with Vancouver and how beautiful my hometown is, it's just that going home in a sense is the death of me as a college student and me as a different person than the ghost I used to be there.
My most recent experience with my former life came over Christmas break. I hadn't been home in over 9 months and I was excited to spend time with my family. Though my parents hadn't changed much, they did seem older--I seemed older too. The months away from home seemed to age me in a way that I couldn't quite pinpoint. At church the members of my home ward greeted me with friendliness, but I knew some of them still saw me as the angry youth I was when I first left home 5 and a half years ago. Because I haven't spent any time there since leaving for school and then my mission, they haven't had a chance to see me as I am now. They haven't had a chance to replace their former image of me as a youth.
All of this is so deliciously cliche too. There are so many of us college students that leave home and then realize that home has changed (or perhaps they have changed but don't realize it) and nothing is the same anymore. My own revelation is that my life has left my hometown, though I still love it for my family and its nostalgia.
No, my reason for not wanting to go home now is in partially because I want to find my own life outside of Canada, outside of Vancouver and the safety of my parents. The other reason is I know that if I go back I may lose a part of who I am now--an independent college student that believes in the future.
