“He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.”
— Neil Gaiman, American Gods
I moved in on August 27.Classes started on September 6.
I didn't go home for Thanksgiving weekend — not because I didn't want to see my family, I do! But because I knew it'd throw me off. I'm just now finding my footing here. Things are starting to seem more real, solid.
For a long time when I first got here I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just visiting, that this was some kind of trip I was going on. Finding yourself in a new place takes time, but I think I'm finally starting to grow roots here (or at least heavier shoes). Thinking about it, I think I've officially passed the point where I could go home and have it feel the same way.
It's partly terrific and partly terrifying but I don't really have a place I can definitively say is my home anymore. I switched my saved "Home" location on google maps to my residence here because it makes it easier to navigate, but also in part because this is my home now. Or at least it's where I'm living for the time being.
Home in my head is how I refer to the house I moved out of in August. To the province I was born in. To the city I went to elementary and high school in.
But I know that things have shifted in a solid kind of way because now, when I go home (home back in Ontario) for Christmas, or for summer break once school's over, it'll be a transitory space, impermanent in a way it never was before. My bedroom will be the same as it was when I left, but I'll be different.This summer, my home in Ontario will be the place I'm staying while I wait to go back to school. When school starts again, home will be whatever house or apartment I end up living in that year. Home is a point of reference — when I say I'm going home after class I mean I'm going back to my dorm room. When I talk about what it was like "back home" I mean the city I grew up in. When I say I miss home, I don't mean I miss a place at all. I miss that time in my life, the people I knew, the person I was.
Soon enough, I won't be able to say that my parent's house is my home anymore at all. I'll have my own place to spend the summers in, and my parent's house will be the place I'm simply visiting, a stop on my way to somewhere else.
I've never really had any desire to settle down and start a family, but the idea of home is something that's just kind of always been a given for me. I know where it is, that single point of reference. Now that I'm starting to realize that it won't exist for me for much longer I find myself trying to redefine what home is. It's not whatever place you're staying, and I don't think it's that Garden State quote about people creating a collective idea around a place together either. I don't think home is a place at all — or at least I don't think it should be. Home should be yourself. If you can become a full person, if you know yourself and are comfortable and proud of who you are, you can be at home within yourself, and you never have to be tied to one place because you are your point of reference. You are your home.
“Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves.”
— Patti Smith, Just Kids
