I’ve never felt any connection to one location. Each one of my “homes” has simply been a place where I laid my head to rest. The idea that you can enter some building and are overcome with a feeling of relief as you’re welcomed into your own home is something completely unfamiliar to me. I know this issue partially the stems from my difficulties facing my home life as a child, causing me to feel as though I’m only existing where I am temporarily. I have never settled down in the slightest or put my roots anywhere. I believe this is the reason why I am so distant from everyone in my life. To be constantly waiting for the time limit on my friendships to be up has robbed me of so many beautiful relationships with others. After writing it out, it definitely sounds like anyone with common sense would understand that that’s not how life and relationships work, which is true but we need to consider my mindset and all the experiences that have made it. Why would I chase after a connection with people who are only temporarily in my life? My relationships with others isn’t the main topic of this post though; I wanted to touch back on something I’ve previously discussed briefly in this post, which is what home means to me.

    If the phrase home is where your heart is was true I’m not sure where my home would end up being. I have these lives that I dream of that are simply figments of my imagination, yet I continue to pursue each one of them simultaneously. By running myself thin like this, I lose out on the life that I could live, instead cementing me in place. I have lost years of my life to being afraid to live because of what others might think of me or my life. No one is as hard on yourself as you are, which I try to remind myself of as I spiral into thinking what minuscule parts of my interactions with others I would’ve done differently. I am so caught up with these fictional “what if’s” that I have yet to see what the present has in store for me. Back to the phrase I brought up, “your home is where your heart is”, I suppose my heart might be with art or out in nature, but knowing that doesn’t give me any welcoming feeling. I yearn to be back in New York, so maybe that means that my home is there, but who knows. Maybe home isn’t where your heart is, but it is your own heart. Finding comfort regardless of your location sounds like a dream at this point but for someone like me, who loves to travel and is always looking to be somewhere else, that might be the best option for me to work towards. Once I find a home within myself and gain comfort from my solitude, I’ll be able to start living in the present moment instead of only looking in the future. Being fully content with myself will also bring the possibility of more genuine connections with others as I begin to let my roots grow. As much as I’d like it to be true, a life in England or New York is too far away to consider it a reality so I must move froward with my home where I currently am. I must pour every ounce of myself into the walls of my new home in a month in order to make it my own. Understanding that my home and friends are not temporary is the next step to finding fulfillment right where I am, instead of looking for something else to give me a false sense of fulfillment. Leases might end, I might have to move, friendships might fade away, but everything that happens is simply part of life and the temporality of it all does not make it any less valuable than something permanent.

    To be completely upfront, I had the idea for this post today and these thoughts have never crossed my mind prior to this. That surprises me because this realization is something I feel as though I should’ve reached ages ago. Traveling is indeed one of my biggest passions, but every traveler has a home; I’ve denied myself one. I found my home in others arms and homes so I didn’t have to think about where mine might be. This is what causes people leaving my life to be so violently devastating because once I allow myself to get closer to someone, I begin to build a home within them which never works out in either of our favor. Depending on someone to be your rock at all times is unfair, especially to them. This codependency in myself is something I’ve realized years ago and been working on since. It’s something that still impacts my daily life but I’m at a point where it doesn’t suffocate my relationships any longer. I’ve talked about independence and being the first person there for yourself, but I’ve never talked about finding your home within yourself. I might’ve already subconsciously thought about this concept previously, in fact, it might be what has helped me to not be terrified as I travel to places alone. As long as I have myself by my side, I am going to be fine. It is interesting though how this feeling immediately stops once I am back at my actual “home”. Coming to terms with the life that I have made for myself is something I wish I could avoid doing for as long as I live and whennever I return from a trip that realization hits me every time without fail. I feel as though anything that I could do where my “home” is holds less meaning if I were to do it somewhere else; I’m not sure why that is.

    Talking about what I need to do as if it has already been done is a bad habit I have. Just because I realize something does not mean that from that point forward I do not need to put in any effort. In fact, past that point I believe I must put in more effort than I ever have. Growing as a person is not a low effort task, but instead something that requires weeks if not months of significant hard work. Unfortunately, a lot of the topics I delve into in my posts are something that I have realized then put on the back burner and not genuinely pursued adopting into my daily thoughts any time soon. I am aware that this type of neglect is only harmful towards me and what I am trying to accomplish in the end, but it is so difficult to not do it. Something being perceived as difficult is not an excuse to not try though, so from this point forward I plan on trying to change the way that I think so that I may live a more content life. Unlike previous things I’ve talked about though, I actually do know what steps I need to take next. Changing one’s mindset is something I used to think was impossible, especially when someone is trying to do it to themselves. I mainly started thinking like that though from a place of laziness. I believe that way of thinking might have started when I was in middle school and wanted to convince myself that I didn’t need help from anyone so I believed the things that could help me were not possible. If I have the ability to force myself to think in this current self deprecating way that I do, then I believe it to be possible to make myself think the opposite. I have to remind myself every day that this life I live is beautiful and I have many things to be thankful for. By stopping denying myself of the pleasures and happiness in my life, I allow myself to truly see the beauty in my life. I want to make myself genuinely believe that my home is where I am and I don’t need to continuously be looking for an escape.

    I am my own home. I continuously look outward for someone to be what I need, when all I had to do was look inward. For some people, they might get their dream home and as soon as they step inside they can taste the fact that they are where they always needed to be in the air. For me though, I believe that I do not have a specific place that would be able to be called my “home”, at least not yet, but instead my own body and mind can give me some safety from the outside world. When it comes down to it, that’s all a home really is: someplace you can go to escape the turmoils that exist outside your door. Once I am more content in myself and find a place where I can be who I am within myself, I think I might be able to then find a place in the physical world to call my home and mean it. This month is about growing I’ve decided! I’ve already gone through a lot of changes just since the beginning of this month that I’m proud of myself for. I want to try and love myself more and be more patient with myself, which are things I’ve said many times and then never acted on. I want better for myself and in order to achieve that I might have to experience some difficult things, but it’s all for the bigger picture. Life is all about experiencing things that build you as a person. I’ve made sure up until this point of my life to feel every ounce of every awful feeling and I want to start feeling the good ones too. I’m tired of depriving myself of a life of joy for one irrelevant reason or another. Maybe one day I am going to live someplace that I dream about, such as New York or England, or maybe I’ll live somewhere that hasn’t crossed my mind as an option yet. What I do know though, is that for now, I am right here. I am exactly where I am at this very moment and nothing is more true than that. This might not be my home in the future, but this is my home for now. The friends that I know and have are not temporary like I try and convince myself that they are. The world is not ending and my life is not on a timer. All of these things are completely true, yet are some of most difficult concepts for me to wrap my brain around.

    Letting my roots grow where I might possibly need to uproot them in the future is an incredibly stressful thing to think about and probably one of the main reasons why I’ve adopted this extreme way of thinking. The temporality of the situation as a whole makes me hesitant to ever reach out to another person when I know that any connection made might someday be forgotten. Realizing that this come and go that every person has experienced in their relationships is simply the way life goes is one of the most terrifying, yet beautiful, things one can realize. Something only being in your life for a certain period of time doesn’t not take away any value it brought to your life. Denying yourself of that happiness does nothing but rob you of the memories that brought you so much joy. Everyone deserves to experience happiness and purposefully denying yourself of it will make you hate any life you might live. As I work to change my thoughts, I will try and build myself a home with the materials I’ve been given. Home is wherever I am, so if I am going to be here for a bit I might as well make myself at home.