Home (less).

Home is not a place.

In my twenty years on this earth, I’ve laid my head on a lot of different pillows, in strange rooms that were never really mine. I’ve seen a range of landscapes through my window and my neighbors have never amounted to more than familiar strangers.

Sometimes when I tell people I’ve moved ten times thus far, they aren’t sure what to make of such a nomadic lifestyle. To be clear, we aren’t building a new home every few years, we rent your’s, or your neighbor’s, or maybe even your eighth grade english teacher’s. We live in a house, it just isn’t ours. This way of life doesn’t usually evoke any unwanted sense of sympathetic awe but more so reveals itself a concept that seems foreign altogether- “you don’t have a home?”

Well, let me explain. I don’t have a door frame in my house with markings of my annual growth in height nor are my family pictures mounted in my living room. There is no bold lettered proclamation of my family’s last name proudly displayed on the exterior of the house. My room isn’t painted to my liking nor is it decorated to suit my personality. It doesn’t yell, “Devin’s Bedroom”at all those who enter. I don’t reminisce upon last year’s Thanksgiving or Christmas of ’08 when I sit down to eat dinner at a table that isn’t mine. Those memories belong to someone else, whoever they are.

But, my memories still exist.

The dining room table my parents bought from Bernie & Phyl’s, you know, it’s light wood that has two leaves tucked inside to make room for extra guests…that table holds my Christmas dinners. That’s where I remember sitting, balling my eyes out, the night before my first day at South River Elementary School. I was the new girl for the first time in my life and I was god damn terrified.

Those little moments are tucked away, safe and sound, within myself. You see, I don’t need to be in the same living room to remember the Winter Storm Nemo when my parents, their four children, our three cats and one dog slept in the living room together for an entire week without power. I can still tell you about how my brother, trying to start us a fire, filled the entire room with thick pillows of smoke because the fluke was closed in the fireplace. I don’t know if it was the sleep deprivation but we laughed about that the entire night.

Home is often misunderstood. No, I do not live in the same house that these memories originated in, I am a foreigner here. I didn’t create the dings in the walls and I don’t have a story to tell you about what has happened here. But I have a home. I have a home within myself and those who I keep close to me. My friends, the same group of girls I met as a new girl on the first day of third grade, they are my home. My family, the group of people who have endured so much with me, they hold my memories safer than any four walls could possibly do.

Home is not a manmade structure.

The sense of comfort you have, laid up in sweatpants with your feet on the couch you’ve had forever, well I have that too. I find comfort within my conversations and experiences with the small group of individuals who have served as my stability all these years. No matter where I reside, that comfort remains in the loyalty of my relationships. And the feeling of peace that comes over you when  you’re safe inside your home, I feel that same sensation when I’m surrounded by my family. I am protected in their company, just as protected as you are behind a big oak door and an overpriced security system.

In no way do I feel as though you have something that I don’t.

I have a beautiful home, built upon the strongest of foundations, covered by a roof that has weathered every storm Mother Nature can create.

Home is a feeling.