Home. It’s a word that can make us think of family and can be comforting to a lot of people. But it’s also one of the most complicated words I can think of. In fact, it’s right up there with love and life, with the list of words I’ll never truly understand but will never stop questioning. Over the past few years, the meaning of home has been thrown about here, there and everywhere in my mind. Sort of like a weird game of word tennis.
For most of my life, the word “home” meant the house that I lived in. The place where I slept most nights, where my belongings were and where my family were. It was the house - the bricks that had surrounded me as I grew up - that I counted as home.
But then I found out I was moving and the word changed completely. It suddenly became something intangible.
It became the memories I had made throughout my entire life with the people who had grown up with me. It was the bonds I had made with the people who I call my closest friends. It was the places I knew I wouldn’t see for a long time; it was the moments I knew I had to treasure.
When I finally moved, the phrase “home is where the heart is” became more clear to me. My heart was in the house I had grown up in and with the people I had left behind. This place stuck as my home. I actually refused to call the new house that I lived in "home". Instead, calling it “the house”. Yeah, kind of pathetic now that I look back on it.
I’m proud to say that I now call the house I live in "home". It’s where I live and where my family is. It’s where my heart is.
But the county I used to live in - the friends I have, the memories I made, my old childhood home - that’s my home too. It’s where my heart is.
I don’t know quite how to explain. Maybe I should use a Harry Potter analogy? Should work. Think of it like the Horcruxes, just, instead of my soul, my heart is the thing that is being split into two. A piece of my heart has been left inside my childhood house, like the object being made into a Horcrux, and it remains home to me. The other piece of my heart is here with me, in the house that I currently live in. This makes it my home too.
I have no idea if any of that makes sense to you, but it makes sense in my head anyway.
The way I think of it, as my heart is left in different places, those places will also become my home. But that’s a matter for the future, and for my future homes.
So, what does home mean to you? What is home? I'd sure like to know.
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