I don’t know when it hit me that I won’t be moving back in with my mother ever again. It came to me late, I know that much, because I haven’t lived with her for five years. But sometimes, when I see teenagers wearing too much makeup shopping with their mothers at H&M, I recognize that that part of my life is really over. And sometimes, no matter how logical you are, no matter how mature you seem, no matter the fact that you want to be where you’re at and at the age you are, sometimes you just want to go home.

I left high school rather blithely. I don’t remember crying at my graduation or even saying goodbye to all the friends that I’d seen every day since the third grade. I don’t remember what I said to my grandparents to thank them for coming. I don’t remember thanking my teachers for all of their help. I just remember being so desperate to leave home, hoping to buy my bedding from the Bed, Bath & Beyond store near our house as soon as possible.

I didn’t like my senior year of high school much. I had senioritis to a terrible degree and could barely sit still in all of my classes, twitching in my seat, wanting to leave. I ditched a lot of my friends that year, preferring instead to stay out late watching concerts. After I’d finished my music auditions for college, quite unfortunately sated and secure in my amazing singing ability, I spent my Friday nights plunking out musical theater standards on our upright piano.

I don’t remember much about saying goodbye to my mom. Entering college in popular culture is the end of an era—the popular phrase is that you raise your kid until he or she is 18, after all. In The Kids Are All Right, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore drop their daughter off at college and cry and cry because now she’s an adult. She isn't coming home.

But anyone who has ever raised an 18-year-old in this day in age knows that the idea that you’ve finished your baby-raising duties when that baby reaches 18 is a pile of bullshit. I said goodbye to my mother when I was a freshmen in college, left her to lounge against my crisp new sheets and type on my new laptop, and we both cried a bit. It should have been the end of it and to some extent, it was. I couldn’t go into the next room to have her proofread my papers, to go to dinner with me if no one else would.

But in most ways, my entering college didn’t change our relationship all that significantly. The next day I called her to ask her advice about lofting my bed. I couldn’t write as well as I thought I could, so I spent a lot of my time my first semester sending her my freshmen seminar papers for proofreading. I took the hour-and-a-half flight home for every Thanksgiving, Christmas break and my first summer vacation.

That’s why I think it didn’t hit me so hard until this year, when I was really off on my own: I’m never going home.