What is a home?
How many places can you consider home? Every one knows that "Home is where your heart is" and all that sappy nonsense but what if it isn't? What if you heart isn't in the same place as your "home"? Oh wait "This is not our home" right? We look forward to another home huh? Right now I am talking of three different places that I have called home. How can three places be my home? First, I have been out of town for a while. As I was debating staying away for another day I thought to myself, nah, I want to go home and sleep in my own bed tonight. I was talking about my "home" here in Michigan. But the day before I was talking about a friend from home. Did I mean the place I have lived the longest part of my life? Where I was born and raised? No I was talking about someone I know in Pocatello, my "home" for over 5 years. And yet I have one more "home" in Billings, a place I don't seem to get back to nearly as often as I should and yet I still call it "home". So what does "home" really mean? Webster told me that home means "one's place of residence". Well I don't live in two of the places I have very recently called home. So I kept looking and found, "a familiar or usual setting". I have to say that much of my parents' house is no longer familiar. A number of people have lived there since I have left, I no longer can call a room "mine", and even the cupboards in the kitchen have been rearranged so I don't know where everything is. So I am still at a loss as to what my home is. Where I am living now is not usual or familiar, pretty close to the opposite actually. I am struggling with not feeling like I have a home. You know how sometimes you cut yourself and you don't even notice until you see the blood? But other times you have a tiny papercut and it stings like crazy? Well I feel like I am bleeding but nothing is coming out. Like I have one of those papercuts and it hurts. But not on my hands. Or maybe I am just bleeding but I haven't noticed it yet. Because I do believe that it is possible to "bleed" and yet you cant see anything wrong. Sometimes those are the most serious kinds of injuries.
posted by Erin @ 4:25 PM
5 Comments:
I so feel what you are talking about. I have lived here in North Carolina for 5 years, starting my 6th year. It is the longest I've lived anywhere, but I so don't call it home here. I still don't feel at home here. I look forward to moving on to a new place. But then, I don't really have a place I can go that I call "home." It is a wierd feeling. I just always try to stay positive about it. We are where we are for a reason.
Remember when we started calling Poky "home" but then where your parents are is "home home." I think this comes from feeling more than one place is your home for the moment. Maybe you will have a "home home home." Erin, I am basically crying for/with you over the bleeding issue and have nothing to say but that I love you friend.
eringirl, we miss you so much and i ache for you and your unsettledness. jeff just said you have a home in his heart. is that comforting? or disturbing?
dusturbingly comforting?
I totally hate how it feels to be in a new place at first -- in the middle of transition. There is the excitment of new things but then it doesn't take long for the unsettledness of things to get at ya. In those places hey I always have to cling to a verse or a song that makes me feel better....
We love you and are praying for you. Call if you need....
you know how chi alpha paul has the three transitions for relationships: infatuation, disenchantment and love... i think jobs and moving to new places contain these same phases. the disenchantment phase is hard. i'm not sure i ever really got through that phase when my family moved me to pocatello.
i'm sorry you feel so dislocated right now. i do hope it goes away and with it, a new love for the current place you are at.
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