In response to Tony's "Boston, You're my Home"...

It took me a long time to really feel comfortable at college; I was too shy in a department of extroverts and opera singers. I was never really friends with my roommate, and I spent as little time as possible in the dorm. I very quickly volunteered to work in the costume shop at the college, and that became my haven. In the costume shop, I could just work and keep to myself. I eventually made a few good friends, but I felt out of place and cripplingly awkward anywhere other than the shop.

it wasn’t until I moved into an apartment off-campus that I really started to make Salem my home. I lived with some of my friends, and we created a weird little place for ourselves. We grew up together; suddenly, we were responsible for utility bills and parking permits and term papers and Theatre Production Hours and snow bans and noise complaints and it was all a little daunting. But, eventually, we learned. We learned what we could live without (cable, ex-boyfriends, modesty) and what was absolutely essential for life (heating oil.) Every new piece of furniture, every pie crust I made, every sewing machine, every ridiculous themed party and morning-after Bagel World breakfast solidified that feeling of This Is Me Now, This is Where I Belong. That apartment was the place where, for the first time since Middleboro, I felt completely at ease. And I could light CANDLES

ash @ 9:17 PM