Having A Place To Call Home
A "home" can be many things. It's not about the place itself, but what it represents.
I don't have one place that I would call "home". The house and surrounding environment in which I grew up in France has changed too much to feel like my childhood anymore. I've had a whole year revisiting it to realize that. The "home" aspect of it resides in my head, not in reality.
At least not anymore.
This used to bother me. A lot. When we first moved to the US, I would negatively obsess over the fact that our house in Chapel Hill didn't feel like "home". For many years, it was too new. It was too uncomfortable.
Then we moved back to France, and I realized something. Like I said in the first paragraph, my house in France used to be "home". But what do I mean by that exactly? It was a place with memories, grounded in reality, that I could come back to.
Until I couldn't.
I experienced realizing that my home wasn't my home anymore like the death of a character. No longer could I rely on what I used to know. I had to grow. And grow up.
I don't have one home anymore. I have multiple. There are a couple of places that I ground myself in. None will last forever, nor do I expect them to.
There lies the shift that I experienced, which is in the definition of "home" itself. I used to think that a home had to be a singular place, one that stays with you most of your life. Now, I believe that's only partially true. A home - if it is truly one - will stay with a person forever. However, its place in the world might disappear.
Maybe the building got destroyed. Maybe it's still standing, but just not the same. Maybe the surrounding area is unrecognizable.
So here's an idea: maybe home isn't a place on Earth, but a piece of mind. It exists not only through walls and ceilings, but it's associated memories and feelings. Why not? Then, a home can be revisited forever again, as long as the memory of it never fades away.
Now is my second semester of college. My rather small dorm room feels a lot like home, in a way I've never experienced before. I'm able to go and see my friends throughout the day, on my own terms, whenever I feel like it. I didn't have a period of adjustment, where I felt out of place. I didn't get homesick. I guess moving a lot taught me to adapt, finding home wherever I ended up.
