home???

I guess I am inspired in my thinking by other people's perspectives on things. I read a post by an old friend today about going "home." You see her parents are moving to an entirely new town and selling the house she grew up in..."her home." She was describing with eerie similarity the same experience I have had. The strange experience of growing up and creating your own home.

I have now lived away from "home" for almost 13 years, 5 1/2 years not even in the same state as "home." But always when thinking about home or talking about home, it has always meant my house, on my street, in my town in Tennessee. It was always the place that I felt at home and safe. Where I felt the most like me. Although my parents have not lived in that house for a few years now, it has still been ours. I could still drive through the hills and curves and make it to the safest place on earth....HOME. I could pull into the driveway, which I did on several occasions, and just sit there, feeling as though the world didn't exist for one moment, before turning my car around and driving back out of the driveway and back on to life. However, a couple months ago, my parents sold the house that had always been my "home."

It is a strange feeling having your "home" gone when you haven't established your own yet. I realize most people my age have their own homes and families now but not me. I am still trying to figure out where my home, the home I create for myself, should be and what it should feel like. I know my parent's home is where I will always be more welcomed that any other place in the world but it will is now "their" home not "ours."


From the movie Garden State:

Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.