Home

Home is an incredibly confusing concept. As word, it is used to describe the place in which we live. Our apartment. Our house. Our cardboard box on the sidewalk of Avenue A. Weather we have recently moved in and are still without furniture (or pots and pans) or have lived in the same house for more than 20 years, we use the same word to describe it. But if we sit down to really consider what the word means to us and where that definition might actually hold truth, people rarely seem to think of the place that they sleep at night.

My parents moved into their house shortly before I was born. While my mother was pregnant I believe. I lived there for 22 years. Experienced all of my growing pains (or, considering my height, lack thereof), my first steps, my first solid food, and all of my first days of school. I remember when I went to college in Phoenix, Arizona. 3 months into the first semester, I referred to my dorm as home and it struck me as odd but comforting. My friends and I had been out, celebrating our freedom as college freshman, and it was probably after 3 in the morning when we were all tired and I stated that it was time to go home. Somehow, the concept of where my heart was had transferred from my parents tiny house in Simsbury to the dorm where my make-shift family lived. That was 5 years ago and things have changed since then. My biological family has grown older and further apart. I have become independent, at least as far as living is concerned.

I moved to New Haven and into my now ex-boyfriend’s apartment 2 years ago. It was a little soon in our relationship but we were very much in love and I spent most of my time there anyway. The closet was small and he did not offer me a drawer but it was the first time in a long time that I could come home each night really wanting to be where I was. Going back to that apartment felt like entering a place where I was safe and loved. A lot has happened since then. I am living in my first lease. A one bedroom with no furniture and 2 of the world’s friendliest kittens. I have only been in this apartment a week and it doesn’t quite feel like home yet. I have a family here in New Haven. A few extremely close friends including my ex-boyfriend. Sometimes we fight, or get a little annoyed with each other, but when one of crashes his car at 5 a.m., the other will always answer his call. I still spend a lot of time in that apartment and it still feels strange. Not really like a home, but somewhere I want to be. That’s the interesting place about home. It never seems to last in one specific place and though we may have a place to sleep and eat, we may still consider ourselves homeless. Home may be where the heart is, but when that becomes lost, where can we go to feel safe?

Losing

A very close friend of mine always says “any life experience is good life experience”. I suppose that is not something I can argue, though I can’t imagine we know whether or not truth lies in that statement until our lives are complete. I have had quite a few short lived experiences in my life and it cannot be disputed that they each shaped who I am in some way. Whether or not something is ‘good’ for a person is very much a matter of opinion but they have all certainly been experiences and no matter how large or small, I have been affected by each.

Something I have grown quite used to in my limited years is loss. It’s something we all must face eventually. I have lost people, places, memories, and dreams. It is safe to say that everything we ever have, we must lose at some point in our lives. But it seems as though our journeys here are meant to combat that truth. We spend our time searching for a job that will last. A home that will last. A love that will last. The latter, most of all, is the most difficult thing to lose and the hardest to get rid of. Often times, even if we lose a person, the love remains. Like a scar on the span that is our life. Covered by adventure, people, places. But always there, reminding us of what our lives could have been. Of what our lives could be. It’s rather silly to think that we work so hard to obtain and maintain something that breaks us so badly. Without it, we are lost. With it, we live in silent terror that it will kill us. But that bravery is what makes us what we are. Many people believe that our ability to love is what separates us from all other species here. The ability to feel so connected to another person that it seems if we lose them, we lose a part of ourselves. Many animals mate for life and I don’t suppose there’s really any way for us to know if that is love or just nature. Romantic inclinations would lead us to believe the former but I think it is a more primal instinct than that. Beyond this feeling of love or attachment or a simple need to procreate. It comes from a need to make something in our lives stick. Everyday we are given millions of options and every choice we make seems to impact our life. Every experience changes us even in the smallest of ways. Perhaps love is simply a carnal need for stability. The need for just one thing in this world we can’t ever truly lose.