a split heart.

Each day that I get a FaceTime from my sister, a call that opens with a whoosh to the image of her face squished with her kids’, is a day that makes my heart ache just ever so slightly.

I’ve lived across the country from my parents and sister—first, California; now, Colorado—since 2018. It’s been seven years of flights back to New Jersey, text messages, FaceTimes, and weeks-long holiday and summer trips. During COVID, I even drove the 2,800 miles from Los Angeles to Bergen County and back again just to be home for the holidays.

Aside from 2020, I’ve been able to return home four or five times each year.

Even though I sometimes go back for two or three weeks at a time, since 2018, I haven’t been at home for longer than a month.

Until this year.

Back in January, I started teaching a night class at Hofstra University on Long Island. Since it only met once a week, I decided to just stay at my parents’ house in New Jersey for the semester and make the commute every Tuesday. The class started at the end of January and lasted through mid-May. This meant that I would be living in my childhood home, with my parents, and a quick five-minute drive from my sister, for just about four months total.

While I would make some trips back to Colorado during that time, I was going to be on the East Coast for the longest I’ve ever been in seven years.

I was mostly just nervous to start something new—teaching! But underneath the nerves, I felt excitement.

Not necessarily excitement to be back East—I left for a reason—but excitement to be integrated back into the fabric of my family’s daily lives. I was excited to reclaim the feeling of, “I am here.” Not, “I’m visiting.” Or, “It’s a special occasion because Courtney is home!” To just be there—for the small talk around the dinner table, the daily routine of my sister and her kids coming and going, the weekend hangouts, the chill nights watching trash TV, the sitting in silence because we’ve run out of things to catch up on.

For the first time in a while, I got to just be present with my family without having to feel the certain kind of rush or the let’s-make-the-most-of-this feeling that comes with a trip that’s on a timeline.

I loved being there. I loved dancing on the deck with my niece and nephew. I loved that they started running in each day screaming, “KNEE!” knowing that I’d be there. I loved that I became a routine part of their life. I loved that I got to be there for my sister at lunchtime, just to chat. I loved that I got to be there with my parents, just hanging.

It’s been exactly two months since I left. And each passing week, each FaceTime, is a reminder that I’m slowly falling out of the fabric of their routines. Each time my nephew or niece learns a new phrase is a reminder that I’m missing things again.

Which makes me sad, even though I’m absolutely obsessed with my home and life in Colorado.

I’ve been gone for a long time, but those little kids have a funny way of making time feel different, more urgent, than it felt when I left back in 2018.

My heart lives in two places. My heart is split between a place that has come to feel like home and another place that is home.

I saw this image on my Instagram a few weeks. It made me pause—nose tingling as tears started to form.

How lucky am I?

I do miss being in the fabric of their everyday lives. But how lucky that I even have a family that shares a love deep enough to miss. And that respects me enough to let me live a life of my dreams.

I built my foundation in New Jersey, but Colorado is where I’m expanding and becoming.

I love and miss the East Coast when I’m not there, but I love and miss Colorado when I’m not here.

Both of those things can exist at the same time.

Most things exist in duality.

It’s bittersweet to have two homes.

But I’m also really freaking lucky to have two homes.

And I’m not sure that I would have it any other way.

xx

Court

from one home to another.