I'm trying to flex my creative muscles more this year and one of those muscles is for writing so here we are. Besides, we all know I have plenty to say about pretty much any topic! I just need to sit down and commit to typing it all out.
There have been several ideas swirling around in my brain for a few months that I want to write about but the idea of home is the one that's pressing on my heart the most at the moment. A couple things have made me think about this a lot over the past few days.
First Laura Brown, a Minneapolis-based artist I follow on Instagram, had a story where she referenced the following quote by Mary Oliver:
I spent a night last week painting this kinda abstract peacock-ish thing (because remember, I'm trying to spend more time being creative) and thought maybe I would overlay some words onto it but couldn't think of what would fit. Then I saw Laura's story and thought "Of course! What a good quote! I'll put that over my painting!" So I did. (See above.) Laura had written that she just wants to be an artist with her one wild and precious life and it got me thinking about what I want out of mine. And honestly there are so many many things that I want out of my life and they change constantly and contradict each other and it's not always so easy, right? But it kinda boils down to wanting to be happy. I want to make the world a better and more beautiful place but I just want to feel happy as myself.
Which leads me to the second thing that inspired this post. Yesterday I was texting with a friend who asked which city feels like hoooome to me and I haven't been able to stop thinking about this idea of feeling at home in a place ever since. I think it's been a really long time since one location has felt like "hoooome".
I mean, Maine will always feel like home to me, for sure. It's where I grew up and it's where my family still is, and I think being from Maine is a significant part of my identity. I think Maine is really special. But after moving "home" for three years and being pretty damn miserable for much of it, I have little desire to ever live there again. And when I think about a childhood home, it's kinda complicated because I only ever spent half of my time with each of my parents, so even when I was growing up my sense of "home" was split between physical homes.
Then there's Minneapolis, where I loved living. In many ways Minneapolis still feels like "my city". It's kinda where I learned how to adult; the first place I paid rent and had to figure everything out for myself. I am always so nostalgic for Minneapolis but only for the spring and summer and fall versions of it - I have absolutely no desire to live in Minnesota in the winter ever again in my life (as I write this the actual temperature there is -4° and it "feels like" -24°....miss me with that shit, thanks!).
And now I'm in Austin. In fact, I've been here for almost exactly a year (I began my road trip down on February 10th and arrived on the 25th) although 2020 seems like it shouldn't have counted since I didn't spend ANY of the year settling into a real life here. And I'm not sure that Texas feels like forever to me. Although again, this doesn't seem totally fair since I haven't gotten to do any settling into this city.
I remember thinking a few years ago that as I've lived in different places and made meaningful connections with people in those places, no ONE place really felt like it contained all of my heart anymore. I started to realize that you leave pieces of your heart with all the people you love and if they're scattered all over the world, then you're never completely home in one place. And I do think I was on to something there, but I have concluded something different in this current bout of pondering what home means to me.
I make my own home wherever I go. I feel like home to me.
There're a couple different layers to this (external/physical and internal) and I'm going to talk about them both because they both matter to me and I'll do what I want in this rambling blog post.
The external factor is that I'm really good at making spaces feel mine. So even though I don't know that Texas feels like a place I've settled into, I have very much settled into my personal living space. My bedroom here feels like a sanctuary of me-ness. I've come to realize that not everybody has a space like this in their life and that creating a space that feels like oneself is not a skill everyone possesses. But I've managed to do it several times in the different places I've lived and I love that about myself. Now, I think that part of the reason I can make any space feel like mine is that I'm very good at packing my tiny car and so a lot of the same possessions have been in each iteration of my living space. But that's only part of it; a lot of the furniture that makes up my room here in Texas was purchased after I arrived here. I guess I have a distinctive decorating style that hasn't changed in the past decade (or ever??) which perhaps should be embarrassing, like maybe my tastes should be maturing? But you know what? I don't care! I like it. Also, I am pretty sure my style has evolved in some ways so it hasn't just been completely stagnant my whole life. Although I will admit that I've reached an age where it feels pretty immature and lame to slap a bunch of unframed art up everywhere and I should probably start investing in framing the pieces I love but moving framed art to different states sounds like something I have no interest in doing, so I'm still living that college student temporary art life and while it's not ideal it is FINE.
The internal factor is that I feel at home just by myself. Again, this is something I've realized not everybody has. I guess I've known it for a while now in the sense of just being okay doing things alone because I don't have a partner to do things with or even friends in a new place and so I just do thing alone. I go to dinner or a museum or for a walk by myself. I don't have time to wait for someone else to do things with - what if I waited forever and never did anything!?!? I want to do things therefore I do them even if it means going alone.
But since my friend asked about a place feeling like home yesterday I realized it's more than that. I feel at home as myself. Home is where the heart is, right? And I've always considered my family, especially my siblings, a huge part of my heart. And I have friends who feel like part of my heart. But the biggest part of my heart is just...me. I think sometimes people can make any place feel like home as long as they are with their person/people ("Home is wherever I'm with you" and all that). But I decided I feel like home all by myself. I like who I am. I don't need another person in order to feel complete or whole or fully at home. And maybe someday that will change and there will be another person who feels like home to be with and that's okay too! But for now, it feels really good to realize that I've been everywhere with myself for almost thirty years (eeeek!) and I am a good home for myself. Not everyone has that. Some people feel lost - there have been times when I've felt lost, too! But for now, I am home and I'm really glad to be here.
