HOMEEMOHEOMOEHOME

Visual by Juliana Denrich

18 years 9 months and 25 days. Ever since my first breath in this lifetime, I’ve been a citizen of the same town. A town which for the majority of these 18 something years I was madly anticipating to leave behind, or so I thought... 

All my life, until the moment my dad turned on the car engine and drove me to the big city, this place was my home and pretty much all I had known. 

Pieces of old versions of myself still linger in every corner of this tiny planet, a planet that has nothing to do with the one I inhabit now, a solar system on its own. Going back there and not being the same person used to terrify me. It felt like my life there was for good becoming part of the past and I was drifting away from all the people I have been, while living there.

From the first day of living in the new city, my hometown was becoming less and less of a home to me. The strings connecting me to this place where slowly being cut one after the other. My bedroom didn’t look the same. The posters on the wall I had grown so accustomed to seeing every day were thrown away. The walls had a different color and my bed was facing the complete opposite way. The desk, I had shared way too many late night study sessions with, was no longer in the room and my journals weren’t neatly placed beside my bed. That bedroom did not feel the same.

New stores had replaced old ones and others didn’t look the way they used to. The familiarity was cut with a knife into million little pieces.

My small apartment didn’t feel like home at the time. On the contrary, in my head, it was the equivalent to loneliness. I felt trapped in it. No matter how hard I was trying, I couldn’t get myself to the point of accepting this environment as my home and my new base. 

In the process of redefining the meaning of home, I tried to get away as much as possible. Every weekend was a chance to hop on a bus or train or plane and hit the ground running from my “problems”. I visited my sister a lot, even got on a plane to fly out to my best friend. I was desperately trying to find answers that would explain everything that was going on inside my head and around me. 

The truth is, looking back at that time, it almost feels like I was running away from myself. So many things had caught up with me. Things, I wasn’t ready to deal with, but needed to be dealt with. All of this discomfort had me looking for ways to run away. To keep myself distracted so that my pain would go numb. 

By removing myself from everything that caused me pain I had the opportunity to explore myself in ways I had never had before. I had the opportunity to see myself in a new light. In new sceneries. In new colors. Through new emotions. 

I biked through foreign cities in the rain. Screamed in crowds to my favorite music next to people that spoke a completely different language than mine. I cried tears of happiness in train stations. I slept on airport floors. I left my poetry in every random corner. I felt frustrated. Emotional. Happy. Grateful. Nervous. Impatient. I experienced every emotion possible. I lived through all of them. I existed through all of them

By not belonging I found the answers I was looking for. I didn’t have to belong to one single place, and in the same approach, not one place had to belong to me. I had to belong to myself. I had grown so accustomed to relying on external forces but never on myself. I had never sought comfort from myself, so I never gave it to myself.

Through time and a lot of wandering the only form of salvation I ever found came from just a simple statement: Home is everywhere. Home could be any place as long as I was in tune with myself.

Home is the town and the apartment I grew up in. Home is the places that found me laughing to tears but also crying my heart out. Home is the hostel I stayed at in Amsterdam. Home is every place that I still remember and feel nostalgic for. Home is every place that has contributed to the person that I am today; 20 years 1 month and a few days old, writing about this on-going journey. 

Who knows… Maybe in a year none of this will make sense, but for now it all comes down to one thing. Home is more than just a roof over our head or a place on the map. Home is something we have to find within ourselves.