home is where?

You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home any more. All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit that idea of home is gone. You'll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know.

Garden State

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Home. Should be a simple concept – too bad it isnt. Home is where the heart is; but what if your heart is nowhere? Home sweet home; I hope for that, but what if I don’t know where that is? Home alone seems to be the best phrase to describe my ‘really, really’ today.

Yes, home can be a brick building with windows and a yellow door. But home can be that smell of home cooked meal, it can be that warm spot on the couch under a soft blankie, it can be the sound of a familiar voice or resting your head on someone’s chest. Just the thought of these previous sentences make me want to cry… because as much as these things could feel like home, they don’t. They are thoughts and images that I feed myself to try and ease the discomfort.

So silly of me I know. But see, for years ive been so homesick. Time and time again I find myself longing for something.. maybe something familiar, maybe a place, or a person/people… so many times ive cried bcuz no matter how many ppl are on my cellphone list, or how many friends I have on facebook… sooner or later it catches up with me again, I start feeling lonely and homesick.

I don’t know what it is that I long for… but I do, with every inch of me. Its this ache in my chest, it’s a hollowness I feel, where I just curl up into a ball under the covers and cry in an attempt of shedding all the loneliness and emptiness I feel. But of course you never see that! I work so hard to smile, to be positive, to be outgoing and light-hearted… I build this big front and only let a few people see how sadness takes over at the most opportune times.

I got asked today – told actually – that I don’t know what its like to be home sick, that I easily create a community, that here I am in a new city and have a close group of friends already. It seems that my front is working after all…

My friend who asked me about this is going through this too… and I'm so sorry… because I know there is nothing I can do to make it better. I told her to try making new friends, signing up for activities where she can meet new people, to remember I'm always a phone call away… I realized that these are things I do. These are things I get myself busy with… so that maybe I can not only fool others but I can start fooling myself.

Im slowly starting to realize that I build a world of lies for me… that its much easier to fool myself than it is to change the world. Fake it til you make it. As long as you make it before you break…

What breaks my heart isn’t so much that I believe thousands of people are out there homesick and feeling this void just like I am… the worse part is that I don’t know if we can be ‘home’ to each other at all…

Whether I have one or not, I just want to be home…

Pree