What is home to you? The place you get free food, where you curl up in your bed, the place where your family lives or where you grew up? Is it the place you spend Christmas every year or the place where you study on late nights? Your “home” can be hard to define. Is it a physical place or is it a mental state? These are all questions I asked myself after my first year of college.
After leaving my childhood home and moving to Tuscaloosa, I often felt lost between two homes. Then as I began my time abroad in Rome, I felt torn even more amid all three places. It is hard to decide whether home is where your family is or your friends are. This is an odd feeling because anytime you travel and create a life somewhere new, it is like you don’t know where to call home. This was difficult for me because every time I went back to my childhood town from school, I didn’t feel like I was heading “home," more as just a temporary place to stay, but when I came back to school I felt the same way. I wanted one place to call home, the place I am the most comfortable, where my true life is. Then I realized this feeling is part of life, the saying “home is where the heart is” is accurate. We always think of home as a physical place and that we can only claim one place. However, home is state of being. It is partly the house we grew up in and the tiny apartment we live in during school, but it’s more about the people we are surrounded with. We carry bits and pieces inside us to each new place we go and then as we create a life there and make it feel like home. The most important part of home is the people and memories you make there. Just being in Rome for five short weeks, I feel like it part of my home and the friends I’ve made here are all a piece of that. When I go back to school I will combine the new and old bits to build a stronger home.
Having somewhere to call home doesn’t have to be just a physical house; it is a feeling based on the people around you. It’s the comforting sense you get when you’re surrounded by people you love. You are your home and the people you meet are the furniture around you that help make your life worthwhile. You can live somewhere, but feel empty because of the people around you. As you travel to new places and meet more people, your home can grow until everywhere you go you’ll feel a sense of comfort. Home is built through the love and relationships you form around you.
