I have always struggled with the concept of “home,” partly because I have never been able to truly attach myself to a place. When people ask me where I’m from, I’m never quite sure how to respond. My answer usually beings “Well I live in Missoula, I went to high school in Twin Bridges but I’m really from Whitehall, which—if you’re not familiar with Montana—is a small town between Butte and Bozeman.” Having to describe where I’m “from” makes me feel lost and misplaced because I can’t attach one specific location to where my home is; however, I am coming to learn and accept that home is not necessarily a place it's rather a feeling.
A home, I feel, is not as much the place or the where as much as it is the who you share it with and what you do there. Home is the people you love and the moments you share with them. A place is only a place, whether it be in a city, town, country, mountains or a coast. A house is a house, a dorm room, an apartment, a loft or a cabin. Though we can love the places we live, and the setting contributes to one’s understanding of home, the fact is that it is not the where that makes a home a home. We chase the feeling of being comfortable, content and happy, but we mistakenly assume it is a place that makes us feel at home. Where you live could be anywhere, and you can learn to love that anywhere. What you do there, who you share that with, the bits and pieces and pauses in time, the frames that you want to capture in a photograph and the people frozen in that instant are what makes somewhere your home.
Because we, as human beings, are constantly changing, evolving and growing so is our impression of home. What made me feel at home at six is not what made me feel at home when I was 13, and that's not what makes me feel at home now is not what will make me feel at home at 30. As we change and grow with our experiences and moments so do the people we love. Home is what we look back on and realize, in that moment, we were completely content. We look at old pictures and tell the same stories to remind ourselves what makes us feel at home.
Home is a fleeting, intangible feeling that fills your heart with love and your soul with warmth. The old cliche “you can’t go home again” rings true in this sense. You can never go back to the exact same moment that made you feel at home: you can only move forward and find new things to make you feel at home.
