Hey!

Thanks for being here.

Kimbra wrote up a passage today, the title was “please come home” and it was about both the feeling of home, and a poem by a woman who’s name is escaping my brain at the moment. Anyways home has always been a.. weird thing for me, now as I decompress into the evening, I have a lot of thoughts about what I read earlier, and how I feel about home, as a place, as a feeling, as a word.

I decided to title my passage “Coming Home” for a couple reasons, one I need to go home, and two I’m listening to the song “Coming Home” by City and Colour on repeat as I write this. I’ve found that sometimes listening to a song on repeat while writing helps me keep my train of thought. Here we go.

In Kimbra’s passage, she mentioned that home is a place inside us, in our stomach, in our gut, our first heart as she called it. I think that’s accurate, and why I haven’t felt home in a while. If we want to discuss the idea of home being a person, or a place, or a thing, all that leads to me not feeling home either.

If home as a person, it was Mia. It WAS. For 6 years that was home in person form. Bad days were met with her love, and the day no longer seemed bad. I think as humans, it’s somewhat natural to find home in people, I mean hell home is a person for the first 9 months or so of your existence. Last October home in the form of a person seized to exist in what felt like the blink of an eye. I never thought she could leave me, I figured I was the one, but I understand her sadness, so I guess I’ll just hold my tongue. That line was plagiarized, it’s a line from the song, duh! It’s not a lie though, I did think I was the one, or she was the one, however you’re supposed to say it. I’ve been wrong before though, so let’s continue.

In March of this year, Home as a physical place, a building, with shelter, and food, and a bed, and my mostly meaningless possessions, also gone. After 3 years, which as sad as it sounds may be the longest I’ve lived in one place since my parents started doing drugs, I sold my house. I actually moved out before it was sold, after Presley passed on February 27th, and Mia was gone, that house no longer represented home, it felt empty, and so did I.

Home also existed in Presley, My sweet angel of a dog who I adopted in 2017. Roughly five and a half years later, I sat on the floor of a room in Groton with her, Mia, a couple of blankets and toys, a collar, the usual, and we put her to rest. If I’m being fully transparent, remembering that moment as vividly as I am right now is making me have trouble breathing, and the lump in my throat is overwhelming. I actually think that day was the last time I saw both of them. What a fucking heartbreaking moment. Obviously I know Presley is dead, and she’s not coming back, but for some reason when I think about that actual moment it’s like realizing all over again that she’s gone, as tears stream down my cheeks and my nose runs right now, I’m at a loss for words.

So home can exist inside of you?

Part of what Kimbra was saying in her passage, is that you should feel like home to you, I’ll add the quote below that she said, a quote from Frederick Buechner.

“A part of you was left behind very early in your life: the part that never felt completely received. It is full of fears. Meanwhile, you grew up with many survival skills. But you want yourself to be one.”

That right there, it hit me, as I’ve grown in life, there’s been parts of me that never felt completely received by loved ones, I always try to move away from those parts. Moving away from who you really are just creates unregulated fear in your body, in your gut, and it teaches you to survive, as long as you survive it’s good enough.

I want me to be a survival skill, I want to feel so comfortable with me, that when that unregulated fear sneaks in, I know I’m gonna take care of myself, that it’s safe to come home, home being me, it’s safe to come back into my body.

Kimbra mentions that she wants a type of home that doesn’t rely on others, and woah does that sound lovely, intriguing, independent. That statement sort of made me see that my whole life I’ve been searching for home, I’ve just been looking in the wrong places. I can’t confidently rely on someone else to be home for me, to be safety for me, partially because I don’t currently have that bond with anyone, and partially because everyone I’ve trusted to be home has let me down at some point or another.

It’s time.

It’s time to find home in me, in my gut, it’s time to teach my body to be hospitable to me, to teach my mind to be hospitable to me. If I could teach myself to be so hospitable towards others as a career, surely I can teach myself to be hospitable to me right?

This is so exciting to me, as I learn to bind with the fabric of my being, surely I can then take that foundation and stability and bond it with someone else, building something that doesn’t shake or tremble, but that also didn’t rely on someone else to build the entire structure to.

How do you learn to be home for yourself? I’m sure it starts with feeling safe with yourself, but what else remains important to becoming home, as a being?

As always I’ll leave you with a line from the song, and as always thanks for being here.

“I know that we’re taking chances,

You told me life was a risk,

I just have one last question,

Will it be my heart?

Or will it be his?

Coming home.”

Where the skies are gold not gray,

J.