Where is home?
Since I graduated high school, I have moved seven times. In college, I hopped from dorm to dorm then off campus to two different places. After college, I moved again, then moved home with my parents, then moved to where I live in Houston. I get caught up in the idea of “home”. I think a lot of people my age are ready to stop moving and settle somewhere where you don’t have to keep 67 cardboard boxes under your bed for when you have to move again in 365 days. We are also living in a time where if you want a home you have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash or pray that you can get a 30 year mortgage (not fun considering current interest rates). Currently, both of those options are fairly far down the road for me. In seven months, my boxes will be moved to a new place that I will attempt to make feel like a home all over again.
If you’ve read my about page, you will know that I love Nora Ephron. I have seen every one of her movies countless times and I am fascinated by how each main character's home is so distinctly theirs and, for lack of a better word, homey. I have dreamed of Kathleen Kelly’s apartment from You Got Mail my whole life. The camera pans around her apartment and all of the things, photos, textures, perfectly reflect Kathleen in that movie. I have always wanted that. My friends always tell me that I am a 80 year old trapped in a 26 year old body because I am very particular. The little things are important to me and everything has its place. I want it to feel like me. I want to have art that means something to me on the walls, photos of the people I love and my books that hold my memories on display. I like to have things around me that hold a memory. I find comfort in that. I hate moving because I am not someone who can just survive in a space. I know, I know, things are just things, but is it wrong to be sentimental and want to walk into your space and feel embraced by all of the memories and the things that make you happy?
All of that being said, I still struggle with “home”. There are times were I have traveled to different places and felt that ever so humble sense of home. Scotand has a warm and special place in my heart. I visited when I was little with my family and I studied abroad there in college. There is something about it that I can’t quite explain, but it is incredible. Our family bay house in south Texas is my favorite place. It is my happy place and I consider it to be my home as well. Is it possible to have many different homes? Is home a place that holds a small piece of you? For example, my parents house will always be home to me because that is where I grew up, but at the end of the day home is where my parents are. My apartment is technically my home/ place of living, but in several months it will just be a beautiful place that once held many memories and many plants. I guess I am always longing for the meaning and the feeling of home. Home is both a dream and a goal. To find a place of peace.