Home

My dictionary says that home is a place where something is naturally located; an environment where one and its surroundings are perfectly harmonious. This is home.

I’ve called many places home over the years: Colorado, Spain, Australia. But home has transcended even these tangible places. Home has been a cup of tea with my mom after dinner. Home has been getting mad at my dog for shedding all over my freshly washed black jeans, only to apologize a few seconds later and learn to love the wisps of blonde fur that grace nearly every corner of my closet. Home has been hanging up each individual sock on the clothesline in the backyard, waiting for the Spanish sun to exude its warmth. Home has been morning walks to the beach and solitary Australian sunsets that made me feel like I was opening up a gift no one else would ever be able to see. Home has been people; people who have hurt me and people who have renewed my love for the world. Home has been feeling grateful, inadequate, loved, betrayed, serene, and every sensation in between, sometimes all at once.

I always find myself homesick for a place that I don’t know, maybe somewhere that doesn’t even exist. And then I realize that all of my homes, all of these connections, memories, and experiences, all of the places that I seem to have naturally gravitated toward and settled into, they each have something in common: me. Home isn’t inherent in any of it. The truth is that home is me. I don’t have to ever seek anything outside of myself for fulfillment, to feel whole, to be at home. This haven, I never have to leave it. And that is a truth worth discovering. Welcome home.