The first thing that became my new home was a city that I had a love affair with, learning every part, sleeping wherever I could afford rent for awhile, moving on every few months. Eventually the love affair ended as my horizons broadened and I didn’t feel the same rushing sense of homecoming I used to get when pulling into the city limits by plane, train, or automobile.
In the city I loved I found an apartment that years later various people I dated would refer to as “that place that really suited you.” It was a great apartment and, for a year, was absolutely home and the epicenter of everything important in my life. It held great parties, great friends, and great sunny Saturday mornings alone. I gave it up for an opportunity abroad and still think of it fondly, I checked on it and almost wrote a note to the new owners when I was back in the city.
The next thing that became a home was a person I fell in love with who had a much more stable life than me. His home, but more so his presence in it, became a home and a resting place for me. In his presence, I would feel a calmness and be able to stop moving. His stability gave me place in the world.
I got restless and went to the other side of the globe, literally, and found a small community full of people like me, who welcomed me with open arms. It was something like how in almost famous the protagonist says “I have to go home” and Kate Hudson’s character responds “You are home.” Home can be a bunch of other people, a community in a specific place. There, I live somewhat communally, sleeping, eating, and living generally with people I love, mostly those who also left a non-home to find it.
Right now I’m far away from home. I live in an apartment in a city, by all means comfortable and quirky, but nothing about it feels like home. I’m working eight more months, going “home” for five months, and finding a new adventure.
]]>The moments spent in the tent form many of my fondest memories. I cannot wait to head back into the wilderness, where the struggles and headaches of modern life have yet to leave there mark. There is nothing as comfortable as home.
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