on the idea of home.

i don't remember when it happened, but at some point early last year my neighborhood, my home stopped feeling like home. i had just turned 27 and was feeling...less than. i didn't feel like myself.

i fell in love with my apartment the second i walked through that brown door. i knew i'd found my four walls. i was in a place in my life where i needed to find and make a home for myself. and i tried my best to do that.

i loved the oldness of my building, the back deck i could see from the corner, the fact that there was a back deck, the stained glass door facing southeast, the sox games i could hear with the windows open, the mexican restaurant two blocks away, the landlord who left presents on easter and christmas and took care of my cat when i went out of town.

i fell in love with having all. that. space. too much space for one person. and the quiet, which, at times, was the bad kind. and the old-fashioned tub. the tub pretty much sealed the deal for me on the first walk-through. 

and i loved coming home after a painfully long day and collapsing on my bed, looking out my window, and seeing the skyline, a reminder of where i was. how i felt looking out that window surrounded by quiet and a room of my own. i felt free.

but it changed, as things do.

how i felt changed. the free feeling changed. the "little" things i chose not to focus on became bigger: the hour plus commute to and from work, the lack of heat in the winter and absolute lack of comfort in the summer. the photos on the walls and the fridge changed. the quiet, the loneliness, my street, all of it stopped being what it had been for me. 

i was in the process of becoming someone else. and that's the whole point of life.

we grow. we become. we outgrow certain things.

if i had to describe my life in one word these past three years it would be hungry. 

i've been hungry my whole life, but it wasn't until i sat in my professor's office while discussing my essay a little over a year ago that she used that word. 

it woke me up.

three years ago i was hungry to find a home, to build a home for myself. but things, people, life change. when a place no longer feels like home, be it a house, apartment, or table full of people it can't be ignored. i know what home feels like. home is warmth, solace, laughter, plates clinking, a dog-always a dog. home is that breath when you walk in the door, or you sit in the yard. even while you fold the towels, that second of calm, that this is it. thank you, thank you.

so much has changed, including where i lay my head at night. i've been living more, breathing, easing into my life. even with all the other chaos in my life i've never known this kind of peace. i have faith that the parts of my life that need work, lots of it, will be okay. i'm already okay.

i've come home.