A Place Called Home.

Is it really a place? What if it’s many places over a lifetime? What if it’s the people you fall in love with? What if it’s nowhere and no one?

I have never felt at home anywhere. No place feels like home because I never learnt to let my love take root. No one feels like home because every time I tried making a home out of a person, they turned me homeless – bereft and wandering in search of a new home. There are still people in my life that feel like home but I’ve learnt to not make a home out of people; it’s too much pressure on a human heart.

Maybe this lack of belonging is because of the constant moving growing up or because I never felt at home in my own body, looking at my own life from a third person view. How would I even know when I’m home? How would I even know which place to call home? Is there any home for me?

I don’t think about it often but it comes up the most when I’m not feeling well. When I look in the mirror and can’t recognise myself. When I feel so sick that I miss my mum. When I am so heartbroken my throat and eyes hurt from the effort to not cry. When I am so tired that I don’t know where to go for comfort.

I am thinking of home today because it feels like the perfect time. The weather is getting warmer, adult life has a sense of balance, there is nothing troubling me. I am perfectly content. And so, I am thinking of the home that I am trying to build.

I have gotten better at making a home out of myself, of calling any place home where I stand. On bad days I have to try a little harder to remind myself but that is all I can do. I refuse to keep chasing a place that might never exist. I refuse to keep holding onto the wrong people, hoping against hope.

I am trying to make a home out of myself for the little me who was convinced she would never belong. And I am trying to make a home out of myself for the big me who still sometimes reverts to that belief.