Heart and Home

It wasn't until I got older and had grown in wisdom that I came to know what 'home' really meant for me. Growing up my parents set out to provide a place that was filled with love, protection and stability. I always thought that home meant the place you grew up in, the house you get dropped off by your friend's mom after a play date. The one you run back to after playing for hours and hours after school. I thought it was like what you see in the movies. Your childhood home that you come back to visit as an adult. A place your parents find and call their forever home, the one you have all your firsts in, the one you do all your growing up and learning in. The one you drive away from as you set off for college and spread your wings only to come back to on holiday breaks. But that fairy tale of a home wasn't anything I would see or know. It never is like the movies portray it to be. Maybe for some but for me it came in the form of the safety and serenity my siblings and I created for ourselves.

I reminisce about my care-free childhood that expanded my imagination. I can recall using the street lamp as my curfew reminder to come back in the house once it got dark, the mischief my siblings and I always found ourselves in and the ability to try new things because we didn't have the weight of the world critiquing our every move. We created a safe space where we could explore, laugh, run free and lay in the grass watching the clouds pass by. Back when time seemed to stand still. We made up stories and jokes as we laid in bed waiting for sleep to overtake us. As the years went by and our parents drifted apart, our home became "broken" or at least that's what society called a family when parents got divorced. It felt like a disease. It felt like I was broken. My safe space from the world, my home seemed to come closing in, it felt smaller and smaller as the years went on.

As my teenage years approached, I found myself in two different households. Two parents, two kids to each one. My sister and I stayed with our father. I was always so close to him so it was no question that I would live with him. But between his nonstop work schedule and his search for companionship we were left to make due with what we had. The raising of my sisters fell on my shoulders. My father did find love but it lead him to leave his old world behind and start a new life on the east coast. When he left I felt lost and alone. I desperately tried looking for love and stability in all the wrong places. My senior year of high school I became pregnant but knew without a doubt that I would have my baby. The worry and fear set in of such a huge responsibility. How would I know what to do and provide for a baby as a teenager? What will I do for money and will this baby have everything he needs to live a good life? I had my son at the age of eighteen, fresh out of high school. When his father and I didn't work out, I found myself back at my mom's house. Our relationship was strained and she had a tendency to move a lot but no matter what, wherever she was, her house always felt like home. The comfort and love she provided was enough to sleep well at night. It felt safe.

When I had my son, that feeling came back. The one I recognized as a child with my siblings. One of peace and comfort. Something I couldn't quite pin at the time but knew it just felt right. In all the many things that I did wrong, this one felt so right. He felt like home. It felt like a reunion as he passed through the realm of Heaven into earth and into my arms. I tried to hang on to that feeling for as long as I could.

Many trials and lessons passed. I still hadn't found a place to settle in and call home. In and out of houses, friend's houses, apartments and even my car at one point. One place in particular was a town home my sister and I got together. We were back to where it started in high school. She and I living together. She and I doing what adults were supposed to do. Work, pay bills and then do it all over again the next day. We'd get up for coffee together and then make our way out the door for work. We'd later get together at night to recap our day and then she'd go out or sleep at her boyfriend's place. I loved living with her but it felt lonely when she left. In the short years after high school, my instability landed me by myself. The feeling I tried to savor with my son his first night in the hospital was slipping away. I didn't realize at the time that it was my own doing. I blamed everyone but myself that things in my life just weren't going the way it was supposed to. I allowed the belittling, I provoked the arguments. For so long I felt hurt and deserted that I wanted everyone around me to feel my pain too. I had so many big emotions that a person my age didn't know how to handle. My son's Dad and I were toxic and petty together that it started to get ugly. Arguing back and forth, hiding my son, giving me stipulations which I allowed and the feeling of defeat weighed so heavy. I didn't know how to get out of this hole I dug for myself. I was weak so I drowned my sorrows in a bottle and work. I wasn't an alcoholic but my drinking was frequent and all I wanted to do was numb my pain. I was unstable emotionally and in retrospect, I was physically unstable too. I had no real place to call my own. No feeling or sense of home. My son was with his Dad most of the week which made me feel even more of a failure but I made the best of it. I saw him whenever I could in the evenings and would take him for weekends. Whenever he was with me, that feeling would return. Comfort, peace. I realize that in finding myself back with my sister, it was more comfort for me when she was around too. It felt like old times. Again those same feelings overwhelming me of comfort and peace.

A few years later, I came across an old family friend on social media. I had a crush on him in our childhood days but we lived in different states so that was short lived. I requested to be his friend and we rekindled a friendship that would quickly turn into something more. We had known each other since we were young so it felt like we just picked up where we left off. The sense of peace and comfort filled my heart and I knew that this was the man I was going to marry. We relocated to California after we married. I was stuck in a nasty custody battle and I took the biggest loss. My son's Dad was awarded custody while I was left to pick up the pieces of my broken heart and travel back to California without him. It was devastating. My peace and sense of home, a piece of my heart was cut out and left to stay where I wasn't. I was happy in my marriage, my husband saw me and allowed me to open up a part of me that felt missing for so long but I didn't feel complete. We didn't feel complete knowing that our oldest child wasn't with us. Three more boys later and that same feeling would arise as I held them in my arms after giving birth. There always felt like a piece was missing. Whenever my oldest son would come to visit, the feeling would come back and my heart would calm.

I've had lots of progressive years since those dark days. Many years of learning to love my whole being and accept myself as a beautiful soul. Pushing through the feelings and emotions of the traumatic and depressing events in my life. But the one thing that remained constant was that feeling in my heart. With the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations, my heart followed a familiar feeling I had as a child. Although I didn't have the fairy tale house to come home to or the one I had growing up as a child, I realize it wasn't the location or the actual home that did it for me. I had people in my life that made me feel right at home. They were the ones that gave me peace and comfort. For me being home has always been a feeling of safety, stability, comfort and peace. The locations may change but those feelings remain and how truly grateful I am for the home I've been able to create not just physically but wherever I go. And wherever I go, my 'home' will always follow me.