What makes a place a home?
Article written for Night Owls.
As a child, the concept of home is easy to define. Home is the house you live in. You’ve lived there all your life and you can get from one room to the other with your eyes closed. Home is… home. That’s enough explanation.
Home is where you will spend your entire life. Home is the place you will always go back to. Home is where you know you will always find your loved ones.
As you grow older, however, you begin to hate the place you call home. You think those walls that hold so many memories between them are imprisoning you. You need to get out. You scream at your loved ones, you slam doors and you stay away as much as possible. You vow to leave as soon as possible.
You move away because the new place is closer to work or university. You tell your parents that but you all know why you need to leave. It’s time. All birds must leave the nest one day. Or maybe you want more distance between the people you love but also need a break from. You are happy to be accepted to a foreign university and you make a house in that country home.
Life works out this way. You have fewer arguments with your family. You talk to them regularly. You love them. You convince yourself that both places are home to you. Then you go back home, to the house you once escaped from, and you notice that the bathroom has new tiles or that the mugs used by your siblings are different. You try to fit your daily routine to suit their routine but you fail day after day. When you get home from the airport, you are excited to meet them and share stories with them and give them all the gifts you bought. But they have things to do the next day. You pretend to not notice how sleepy they look and after a while, they apologize and go back to their rooms. You are left alone in a room in a house that no longer feels like home.
So you blame yourself. You promise to visit more frequently. You try so hard to be part of your family once again. But at some point you give up. When you talk about home, you are talking about the house in that once foreign country. You realize how much you want to go back to the routine you are so used to. So you do. You cry when saying goodbye to family but knowing you’ll be home soon calms you during the flight. You get there and tell your friends who are now family all about your holiday. And they listen. They don’t excuse themselves to go to bed. They stay up and you have your favorite food.
You finish university and find yourself a job. Your parents ask if you’ll be coming back and you tell them you want to see what this country has to offer. Before you know it, you are getting your citizenship in this new country. You fall in love. You get married. You have kids.
And you see less of your parents. They are getting older and frailer. You worry about them but they are so far away. Then one day, you get the call you always knew you would someday. Your father has passed away. Your mother tells this to you and as she cries, you want to be there next to her. You hear your sister do what you want to be doing. Hugging her and telling her it’ll be okay. You book a flight to go back… home. When you get there, the funeral is over and all your relatives comment on how you missed it. ‘It would have been easier for you since you weren’t home.’
And then you begin to wonder where home is. Which world did you really belong to? Where is home?
As cliché as it sounds, home is where the heart is, and the heart sure is a traveler. Sometimes when you go on holiday, you leave your heart behind. You miss home terribly and you feel so scared to be in a place that isn’t home. You miss the familiarity and warmth of everything you left behind, even temporarily. Then you find that your heart is back with you and that even a cold hotel room or sparsely furnished apartment can be home.
And then it begins; the unconscious reference to your place of stay as home. “We’ll go home after this film,” you say, and then correct yourself and say, “To the hotel, that is.” Slowly you stop doing that. Why bother? The hotel room is home. It’s where all your things are. It’s where you go back to every night. It is, in a sense, home.
Home isn’t the easiest to define. And it isn’t the easiest to let go of. But at some point in life, you have to admit that home isn’t the building; the concrete, the bricks or the paint. Home is the people you are with. Home is family and friends. Home is where you find love.
Home is, after all, where the heart is.
“You’ll feel so homesick that you’ll want to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won’t kill you. And one day the sun will come out – you might not even notice straight away, it’ll be that faint. And then you’ll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who’s only yours. And you’ll realize… that this is where your life is.”
-Brooklyn (2015)
As a child, the concept of home is easy to define. Home is the house you live in. You’ve lived there all your life and you can get from one room to the other with your eyes closed. Home is… home. That’s enough explanation.
Home is where you will spend your entire life. Home is the place you will always go back to. Home is where you know you will always find your loved ones.
As you grow older, however, you begin to hate the place you call home. You think those walls that hold so many memories between them are imprisoning you. You need to get out. You scream at your loved ones, you slam doors and you stay away as much as possible. You vow to leave as soon as possible.
You move away because the new place is closer to work or university. You tell your parents that but you all know why you need to leave. It’s time. All birds must leave the nest one day. Or maybe you want more distance between the people you love but also need a break from. You are happy to be accepted to a foreign university and you make a house in that country home.
Life works out this way. You have fewer arguments with your family. You talk to them regularly. You love them. You convince yourself that both places are home to you. Then you go back home, to the house you once escaped from, and you notice that the bathroom has new tiles or that the mugs used by your siblings are different. You try to fit your daily routine to suit their routine but you fail day after day. When you get home from the airport, you are excited to meet them and share stories with them and give them all the gifts you bought. But they have things to do the next day. You pretend to not notice how sleepy they look and after a while, they apologize and go back to their rooms. You are left alone in a room in a house that no longer feels like home.
So you blame yourself. You promise to visit more frequently. You try so hard to be part of your family once again. But at some point you give up. When you talk about home, you are talking about the house in that once foreign country. You realize how much you want to go back to the routine you are so used to. So you do. You cry when saying goodbye to family but knowing you’ll be home soon calms you during the flight. You get there and tell your friends who are now family all about your holiday. And they listen. They don’t excuse themselves to go to bed. They stay up and you have your favorite food.
You finish university and find yourself a job. Your parents ask if you’ll be coming back and you tell them you want to see what this country has to offer. Before you know it, you are getting your citizenship in this new country. You fall in love. You get married. You have kids.
And you see less of your parents. They are getting older and frailer. You worry about them but they are so far away. Then one day, you get the call you always knew you would someday. Your father has passed away. Your mother tells this to you and as she cries, you want to be there next to her. You hear your sister do what you want to be doing. Hugging her and telling her it’ll be okay. You book a flight to go back… home. When you get there, the funeral is over and all your relatives comment on how you missed it. ‘It would have been easier for you since you weren’t home.’
And then you begin to wonder where home is. Which world did you really belong to? Where is home?
As cliché as it sounds, home is where the heart is, and the heart sure is a traveler. Sometimes when you go on holiday, you leave your heart behind. You miss home terribly and you feel so scared to be in a place that isn’t home. You miss the familiarity and warmth of everything you left behind, even temporarily. Then you find that your heart is back with you and that even a cold hotel room or sparsely furnished apartment can be home.
And then it begins; the unconscious reference to your place of stay as home. “We’ll go home after this film,” you say, and then correct yourself and say, “To the hotel, that is.” Slowly you stop doing that. Why bother? The hotel room is home. It’s where all your things are. It’s where you go back to every night. It is, in a sense, home.
Home isn’t the easiest to define. And it isn’t the easiest to let go of. But at some point in life, you have to admit that home isn’t the building; the concrete, the bricks or the paint. Home is the people you are with. Home is family and friends. Home is where you find love.
Home is, after all, where the heart is.
“You’ll feel so homesick that you’ll want to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won’t kill you. And one day the sun will come out – you might not even notice straight away, it’ll be that faint. And then you’ll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who’s only yours. And you’ll realize… that this is where your life is.”
-Brooklyn (2015)
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