Living Out of a Suitcase (Home)

                There’s a two week break between when I arrived in the states and when I leave for school. I haven’t unpacked, and I most likely won’t. The room I grew up in has just become storage area for things I can’t take with me. There’s no comfort when my day ends in this bed, it feels just as weird as a different bed in a different place.  Which is fine, there hasn’t been a lot of emotional value here. In fact, It’s where most of my dreams have died. In this room I spent countless hours playing guitar and singing in hopes of being a professional musician. I learned you have to be good at music for that. My dream of being with who I loved died here, behind a 13 inch laptop while I curled up in the corner denying everything she would tell me. Being a writer is still a real dream, but that’s just because my room has four walls that shuts out the world. Any standing structure could have kept that dream alive.

                Even when I’m settled, I’m still in between places. My bed occupies space in this house, but all my meals are either out with friends, or at my mom’s house. Life has been different since my parents divorced. First, I felt like the only adult in the family, and sometimes I was. Later on things smoothed out, and though we’re physically farther apart, I feel closer to the individuals of my family than before.

 I guess this house will always have that story factor. “Here’s where I grew up, here’s the things I did.” It’s worth remembering, but it’s not worth loving. Which is weird, because I usually find love in everything. I’m not sure if I secretly dislike this place because it made bad memories, or I caused bad memories and needed a scape goat. Either way, maybe I find comfort in freedom, having open invitations to live in the place I want to live in at a given time. Maybe I’m in between because no single place has filled the entire gap a home should fill. Like I’m in between incomplete houses, trying my best to grab all the qualities of “being home.”

I can talk all I want, but maybe the only thing I can do now is look to the future. I can’t wait until I have my own family. I’ll be able to have one complete home then. I won’t look to have the house fill me; I’ll fill it, with love. And I don’t care if it’s a small 2 bedroom apartment or a house on a mountaintop, it’ll have my family in it. In the end, that’s the only requirement a home has to fill.