Saturday, September 21, 2013

What Is Home?


Inspired by my mother accidentally calling my college dorm my "home."

What is home?  Frankly I can no longer tell.  About thirteen years ago I was planted in a humble house that didn't have much to it other than the foundation, the walls, and the roof.  I didn't budge for many years, but oh how my heart dreamt of going beyond the horizon, where the dull flat earth collided with the limitless expanse of the sky.  Sometimes I could envision myself floating up higher and higher, so that my fingertips could slide along the outline of the circle of the sun.  Something real would always pull me back down.

Yet what was imagined is now real, and what I thought was the future is now here.  There is a me-sized hole in my parents' house.  I call it a house because, well, I don't know what my home is anymore.  It is a new reality that I must grasp.  What is mine?  Who have I left behind?  Who is just ahead of me?  Where is my home?  My body is being stretched everywhere at once, but I can't reach far enough to touch anything.  I am suspended between wonderful, almost-forgotten memories of an old world and a new universe that becomes more and more familiar with each day I spend there.  I am no longer content in my parents' house.  They know that, and I know that, but I still think of them everyday.  I want to soar into the new and unknown, but I still embrace the olden days.  Is where I live now my home?  The question spins around my head in an endless whirl of I-don't-know.  Will I ever know?

The answer is to be decided.

No comments:

Post a Comment