"For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home."
It was time I took a book outside with me and actually read leisurely for a bit while my fair skin warmed under the August sky. I walked over to my bookshelf and scanned down the stacked pile of books—economics, nope; autism, nope; change management, nope; buddha, I already finished that one. There was a red-spined novel. I'd never seen it. I pulled it out, read the title, read the synopsis, flipped through the pages, scanned it from front cover to back cover. Where in the world did this book come from? Did someone leave it here? Did I buy it at some point? There was no way I was a 21-year-old with a memory impairment. How could I stack a book so perfectly, by density and by height, into a pile with my other beloved books and not remember it? Well... looks like I found what I'm reading.
I walked outside, took off my flip flops, lay down on a bench, and began to read. The first official line of chapter 1 wrote, "For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home." Home. It was the most bizarre sentence I could have come across; while not something I normally discussed, it was a thought that always probed some part deep in my mind. Home. Where was my home? Where was anyone's home?
The place I was born: My parents, my family, all of the familiar faces I grew up with and familiar places I explored as a child were there. I have memories from this place, good and bad, though not the best and not the worst. I have parents who show me the true meaning of unconditional love, who look at my dreams and tell me that even the sky isn't the limit. I have a handful of friends here who have been with me through the most gut-wrenching of times, people who have never left my side, even when it seemed like we weren't that close.
If all these people— our friends and family— weren't there, why would any of us go back?
The place I moved to: I've been there for 6 years. I study there. Work there. This place is the platform from which my dreams took off. I had never worked harder in my life. I had never been so independent in my life. A family looked after me like their very own daughter. A friend spent his lunch break running across an entire borough and back in order to buy cupcakes and bring me hugs when I landed at JFK with a shattered heart. I've met and learned from some of the most incredibly talented people there. But the bed I sleep on is currently in its third room thus far.
When the four walls surrounding us aren't permanent, can we still call this place a home? Is it just one of many?
The place I left: It was a different country, a different continent— my residence for 8 short months. Leaving was the hardest thing I ever had to do. In late August, I fell in love with a city, and since then my heart has been in a long distance relationship with a mass of land. The air there was different. The coffee was different. The euphoria from laughing with friends was different. I was so comfortable just being. Like with any place, friendly faces came and went, but a few stuck. These are the people I will remember into my oldest-old years, people who made things feel true and calm and right.
Is Simon Van Booy right? For whatever reasons, more than one place feels like home to me. Is that to say that I am lost? Do I jump from city to city because I am secretly in search of something, something that I couldn't find before? Or am I just fortunate enough to have not let distance prevent me from deepening roots in places that are too far for the naked eye to see?
I think it is the people that have impacted our lives in ways we sometimes think we don't even deserve, the people we have come to know and love, that make these places feel like home. It is because of them that our hearts may feel like they are being pulled in all directions from thousands of miles away. If these people were to pick up and move, I think our hearts would too.
So yes, to those who are lost, many places can quickly begin to feel like home. We are a people who are comfortable with the familiar. We like to come back to that which we know. But a real home isn't just a familiar street or an old apartment building—it is the memories that were made and more importantly shared. Some of us have "a person;" others are their own rock. Sometimes we feel like we can stand on our own two feet and sometimes we need a helping hand to pull us back up or guide us forward. I was always ready and excited to go into the unknown because I always knew I could rely on myself. But no matter how restless or content we are with our lives and the direction in which they are headed, we sometimes need to stop, even amidst dangerous waters. Courage, ambition, and curiosity may take us out to sea, to uncharted territory. And yes, these places may captivate us in ways we never saw coming. But it is the people we come to know and love that anchor us, and ultimately make us feel like we are home.