Moving away from home is quite possibly one of the weirdest feelings I have ever experienced. Emptiness, fear, uncertainty, anxiety and an overall uneasiness do not even begin to explain the feeling of leaving your comfort zone to dive headfirst into the unknown. This feeling is due not only because of the obvious fact that you are changing your immediate environment all of a sudden, but because of what you leave behind. How your new location, once the antithesis of home, slowly grows on you becoming your new home, thus completely changing your definition of what it means to be "home". One thing, however, is clear, and that is the fact that, regardless of where you end up in the world, you will always belong somewhere and it does not necessarily have to be where you were born. People construct their identities based on where they feel more at ease. While to some it might be easier to relate to their homeland, to others it is where they find themselves and construct a better sense of being. The reason why so many allow themselves to be taken by their nomadic impulses and desires is mostly due to the fact that, even if they have a place they call home, the yearning to travel and discover new places speaks louder, allowing them to explore other places they might end up connecting more with.
Personally, I am presently caught in between two cities. The one where I have lived in and the one that has created a sense of personal identity that best assimilates with where I am at. While being able to make that transition so easily, it makes me wonder what "being home" means anymore. I moved from my birthplace of São Paulo, Brazil, to Boston in 2013 and had all of the confidence in the world that I was going to return to where I came from the minute I was done with college. I recall not knowing the city at all and begrudgingly coming to terms with having to live on my own, yet I knew that the more I fought that, the harder it would be for these fours years to pass by. I then took it day by day. Realizing more and more how, even though Boston was completely different than back home in every sense of the way, the more I learned about the city, the more it learned about me. As I got through my first year of college, I realized that not only had I grown both emotionally and physically, but that the city grew with me. That the feeling of displacement that once plagued my every move in the beginning was now a familiar feeling that I could control and slowly sensed it's departure.
People will say all kinds of things such as "home is where the heart is" or "home is wherever you find love" and while those sayings might resonate better with some than with others, it is still all about attempting to lable home as a stagnant place that you will always want to come back to; I disagree completely. For the longest time I searched inside of me for feelings that would keep me connected to where I came from, that there was only one place that I could ever consider in this way. I slowly realized that, the more Boston grew on me and the more at ease I felt here, I could eventually call this my home without letting go of the love and connection I had with the apartment I grew up in. I felt that if I was to consider anywhere else in the world to be a safe haven, it would be an insult to the country that I so dearly cared for but had to leave. Yet it turned out that, no matter where I went in the world, I would still be Brazilian. I would sill belong there to that very core and know that I could always go back.
Of course I will always have a more than special place in my heart for where I came from and visit. Not just because I miss it but because so many of my friends and family are still there. On the other hand, I also have made friendships in Boston that make me feel the same way. Impermanence is a fickle little thing and is still a concept that I cannot seem to quite grasp - at the same time it makes me feel out of place at times, but it is what forced me to mature and understand that, as humans, we are not meant to be stagnant. Those of us who dare to travel, discover and indulge in adventurousness are not only the most astute, but the ones with a better sense of self. We become more open to different possibilities, taking in life all at once and being unafraid to explore. I can wholly attest to the fact that traveling and being in a constant state of movement has not only helped me become a better person but more intelligent and tolerant. There was a point in time, before moving to Boston, where I was second guessing leaving and afraid of all that change. I realized that, that change was a shot in the dark and that I would never know if it was good or bad if I did not give it a try. So I decided to undertake the challenge and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It taught me that I can be in so many places at once by creating and maintaining friendships all over the world. It has made so that home is wherever I am at, wherever I can learn and grow is where I will be comfortable and find myself more everyday.
