what is a home? a house? shelter? where you feel vulnerable? where you feel safe?
is it a place that offers protection? or a person? is shelter the same as a home?
what is a home to others?
a nest of your childhood? cradling your fond memories? does it stay that way even if you’ve moved elsewhere? is it a place that gave bounty and nourishment? where you make meaningful connections, and share with those you love?
a place with motherly walls, a fatherly roof?
a place you can trust, i imagine.
knowing its walls’ warm embrace awaits your return. your return from the cold world. that nurses you through plague and abuse.
i think a home is something like that, from hearing others share, show, miss their home. i wouldn’t know myself. but i am a good listener i think. i can imagine, i can dream.
i think “what is a home” is specific to the individual.
so, what is a home to me?
most of my life, i’d maybe say,
where the walls are sick, groaning and crying. where ooze drips loudly off the pipes in the walls. making the “drip, drip, drip” sound that stops my heart.
a home is where i live in fear.
where i’m only real at 3am while the world and others within sleep. where i am lured into trust, into safety, by those who told me this is home. and home is good.
to trust these words, to make peace with the dripping, with the sickness, with the ghosts, until it almost begins to feel like a warm rug on my bare feet, laid on the cold ground.
just for the rug to be ripped from under your feet.
just when you finally trusted the embrace. just when you thought you could give it a chance, a chance to be…
they tell you, a fresh start is better. this next place will be your home.
so you mourn the familiar ghosts that have become your only friends. mourn the dripping you began to understand.
you move through pity offered shelter until pity runs dry. it’s okay, because when we find it, you will at long last know what the elusive “home” is.
and you’ll get there, like it’s an oasis, where you’re so thirsty from wandering the dessert. you’ve been thirsty your whole life, chasing mirages, and finding the will to care to drink.
and you get there, again, and the water is poisoned. but it’s the only water here, you have no choice. these walls are sick too. there is a new dripping, new ghosts, new demons. and it’s infested with rats.
but you’re so tired, so desperate, that there’s hope. so you sleep your best in years, in a new room with nothing of your own. and at least a few friendly ghosts have followed me. each new house bringing a string of friends behind me wherever i go next.
this time, i think, i will know what “home” is.
but those who promised you this is home, this is safety, finally, safety; are those who have abused you.
and so the kind, empathetic, loving motherly walls, and the wise, experienced, reliable fatherly roof, are rendered useless. for they only protect you from what danger lay outside. the nature of their construction an utter joke as safety is a lie within, for those that brought you here are themselves, the ones unsafe.
i enter scared of the ghosts, the sickness, the drips, and i leave defeated, knowing they were more reliable, and kinder, and motherly, than the flesh of my blood. some of these friendly ghosts, i think, had taken it upon themselves to watch over me. like the pity offered shelter. they still do.
as i always have, i take to nature. no walls, easy to run freely, endlessly, arms out like pinned to a cross, but frolicking and prancing. you can get lost, you can run, you can be free.
the undisturbed, harmonious beauty of the forest. there is no unnatural cruelty or torture there.
home is to me, where i could die in peace, and where my soul might live after.
i think a house can be a trap. it keeps what’s inside a secret. you can still find privacy in nature, and coexist with others.
and you can run, run, run from danger. i chose to be here. i was born of the earth here. and this place was made of all souls to ever exist. and so, it is for all souls.
home, to me, is where i feel real and grounded. and, where there is always a way out. home is somewhat within myself, the place being more vague. i can make home anywhere.
no one will tell me what home is again.
this sounds sad, but finally, i feel liberated. i have cowered in the face of abuse to keep stability for what is supposed to be a home. for what i am told is a home. for what i am told is safe.
now, i can live with the comfort i get, knowing all i’m leaving is hurt and belongings.
i can go anywhere. i can do anything. with, or without, anyone.
and i can always find a home.
i just simply go outside. i find a tall tree that seems to reach out to me. within its roots i see the mother i always needed truly loves me.
and i am made of her, and she will take me back someday, and she will make me a patch of daisies someday.
she has no selfish intent. wants nothing of me.
she just wants me to live, enjoy her bounty, her fruits, her creation. respect her beauty, and balance. love her creatures indiscriminately.
even if i don’t, she loves me still.
and so i have a home. always, and forever.
turnnoffyourmind
dededos
kianamaiart
ellievsbear
titsay
blakekathryn
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
