Home

I've grown up my whole life hearing phrases like "Home is where the heart is," and "Home is where your story begins." Many people don't know how this feels, or they live in the same house with their families but it is not Home. For me, 'home' was always this beautiful, close concept of being absolutely together with the people you love in a place that's comfortable and safe.  I was lucky enough to know this reality.

My family moved into what I grew up calling 'home' when I was 5. I lived there until I moved to Chicago to go to college, and moved back there when I graduated. I moved out again when I got married, and moved back in after that marriage disintegrated. I moved out again last summer, when the overwhelming force of turning 30 wouldn't stop beating against me and I felt compelled to prove I was a grown up and could 'make it' on my own. My license still bears this address and every now and then, when I tell my daughter we're going to visit grandma, I refer to it as home.

With all that being said, I must tell you something. I don't have a home anymore.

I don't mean to say that I am homeless. I am not, as Juniper so aptly words it, 'houseless.' I live in a house with my JuneBug, 2 dear friends, and a refugee from Eritrea. We move around each other and make meals together and share a kitchen and a bathroom and we make it work. We have a backyard and air conditioning and couches and happiness. But it is not my home.

I can easily go to my mother's house, where I grew up, and stay overnight comfortably. I can get up in the morning and move around the house effortlessly; fix the coffee, make the breakfast, put things where they belong. Generally I feel like I could still belong within those walls. But it is not my home.

I don't have a home anymore. I have places where my heart belongs, and people I love in those places. When I think of the concrete word "home," I don't think of a specific place because there isn't one. Home isn't a place.

My mother is home, and the way she holds me when she hasn't seen me in awhile is home. Snuggling with my daughter in bed in the morning is home. Watching a movie on the couch with my boyfriend, whiskey in hand and a smile on my face, is home. Catching chickens and waiting out the sunset over vast fields of farmland with my dad is home. Sitting on the porch swings at my grandmothers house, listening to the sounds of the universe and the creak of wood paneling that has seen 3 generations grow up, is home.

I'm starting to believe that I will never have a 'home' again. I might move somewhere else, or change my address, or settle in somewhere, but the abstract concept of home will continue vanishing. Home isn't where the heart is, or where your story begins, or even where you feel most comfortable. Home is where the memories live. Home is where you can feel vulnerable and safe all at once. Home is being loved and wanted and deeply felt by another human being. You could live in a box and still feel like you're 'home.'

So, I will let this word remain empty, and instead soak up moments that I will look back on sometime later in life, and, as if looking a great distance through a telescope, realize I was building 'home' all along.