Do you remember how you used to feel as a little kid when you had to go to a sleepover somewhere, which was not home – while all you wanted was to be at home with your parents, your toys, your cats, your bed? Do you remember? How did it make you feel? Angry? Sad? Did you feel left alone?
Do you remember how it felt when you finally could come home again, after being away for a night, a week or maybe a month? That moment when you enter your house, with its familiar smells and surrounded by your own things and sleeping in your comfortable bed.
Homesick. Experiencing a longing for one’s home during a period of absence. Being sick because you are missing home. Or, being sick of longing for that feeling of home which is so present in your memory, yet so absent in your life.
I do remember how home feels. I remember how I loved to be at home. I remember how the grass smelled in our garden during summer and how we could play in the snow in the winter. I remember how I loved to sit in front of the fireplace under a blanket while my father would read me a book. I felt safe, I felt at home.
I also remember the first time that home did not feel like home anymore. I remember how the warmth in our home was there, yet the safety has disappeared and made place for a new feeling – being sick of home. What do you do when home is not home anymore?
I have tried to find home in other homes. I have tried to find home in my old home, and in new homes. I have tried to find home in my partners, in their beds and in their arms. I tried to find home on the other side of the world, alone on a big mountain. I have tried to find home together, and alone. I have tried to find home in love, and in disconnection. I have tried to find home in me.
And still, I am waiting for the day that I will come home, find my toys, my comfortable bed and curl up under a blanket at the fireplace and feel safe and home again. Does this mean that the comfortable feeling of being home only belongs to a child? Or can I also come home to myself as an adult, feeling safe within myself?
How do you find your way home?
Flow of Healing 