What is home… the question plays in my mind for a bit before the sound of my walking drowns it out…. or maybe that’s just what I wanted. The star thistle and dry grass crunching under my feet looks as empty and as brittle as I feel. I pause off the cracking black top walk way, being conquered by some of the grass and weeds less willing to die. There is a monarch butterfly searching for a place to land. “Keep on flying butterfly,” I whisper, eyes towards the dead ground as the sun pushes its hot hands against my back “This isn’t the way to freedom…” I study the star thistle for a moment, not really thinking… just looking, before I start walking again. I look at the old tennis court, my mind is filled with memories of summers spent riding bikes along the red and green cork surface, distant faded sounds of laughing… an almost lost feeling of happiness… I take a glance back towards what was once my school. And for a moment or two I am tormented by this Vague concept of ‘Home’… first and forever. That’s what I always though. This place, with my friends and smiling faces, and memories. This was my home. …. Was….. I pause at the car door, baffled for yet another moment. NO. It still is home!……. Isn't it? Home is where the heart is, right? With my friends and precious memories… But… what about that other place I call home… what about my new friends, and new memories. All becoming just as precious as the old… So does that mean that that is now my ‘home’? My hands burn on the hot rubber of the steering wheel, but I am too caught up in my thoughts to really care.
I feel so lost….
I’ve always thought of THIS as Home. My home. My place. Mine! … But… suddenly everything has changed, it’s all become a familiar unknown, the sort of stomach twisting emotion you get with de-ja-vu, something you can’t place is familiar, and yet you feel like you have never seen it before….. I don't feel home here… Not anymore. Don't get me wrong, I am happy hear, around my friends. But I feel that subtle twinge of not belonging. Not being of, but being separate. Like a puzzle piece forced where it doesn’t quite fit.
But I don't understand…
Now both ‘homes’ are not home… So where do I belong? I knew a moment ago, but I have forgotten. The concept left me, so sure as the butterfly has left to find a new place to perch. I stare at the school from the care… Past the tennis court and up the hill, fighting off that all too familiar ache in my chest and the tight sting lingering behind my eyes. I swallow and fight back the tears. I suddenly find myself with out a home… Oh not in the literal sense, sure I have a house to live in, and friends and family who love me, and don't think for one second I don't appreciate that fact. … It’s just…. The house, the life… it lacks the feeling. … It isn’t the state of a home that I am with out… it’s the FEELING of home I have seemed to have lost somewhere along the way.
For the first time in my life…. I don't feel that inward sigh of relief at the thought of ‘home’
For the first time in my life…. I have no idea where I stand
For the first time in my life….. I am truly lost in my own confusion….
I want Home so terribly. I wonder if this is just another one of those parts of growing up they so conveniently leave out in all those talks… finding your own home… away from what you thought was home…
Whatever the case… All I know is that there has only been a very few times over this passing year that I have truly felt at Home… In those few moments, I held everything, and nothing was scary or strange or foreign. For those moments the jigsaw puzzle fit perfect… and I crave it now. More than anything else…
All I want…
All I need in this world…
Is HOME
That’s it… Home. Where it is safe and warm…. That one thing…
Would make me so happy….
Because… at the moment, I can never remember the star thistle looking so much like a dangerous stranger…