Home Is...

In the past few months or so, I have often talked about 'home' but I find that I must be confusing my friends as they keep asking "Which home do you mean?" So I thought I would try to clarify exactly what I mean and which 'home' I mean when I am talking about the places I have been and the places that I am going.

When people ask me where I am from, I often say that my home is in the Caribbean. But, honestly, my home is Guyana. It is the place I hold citizenship for, it is the place that I have a passport of, it is the place where I can always return to when I need to find somewhere to go to call my own. But I have never lived there; well, not never. I just left when I was young enough that I don't remember much of it. And honestly, after having spent a month there, I realize that I can never feel at home there. I don't know the place and it is so different from everything that I grew up with and around, that I feel out of place. I just seem to sit on the outskirts and fabric of my land of birth. Everything about me screams foreigner when I am there

For the longest time, I have considered my real home to be where my parents where. That is where I belonged, I felt. And for the first twenty-one years of my life, I lived with them, so it made sense to call where my parents are as home. Even when I was living on my own, pursuing my future, I still would call flying back to see my parents as returning 'home'. Chicago was wonderful, but never felt like home. It just felt like somewhere that I was just hanging out, enjoying the new experience, but in the end, I always wanted to back home with mummy and daddy.

But in the past two years, home has taken on a new meaning for me. It now means the place that I feel at home in. It is the place that I don't feel like I will need to roam in another two, four, or ten years. It is the place I can see myself putting my roots down and living my life. The life that I imagine for myself, as well as the life that I am meant to live. And that place is here and now. It is London and when I talk about finally coming home, I mean London. When I talk about missing home, I mean London. And I can't imagine a better place to consider home than London. I know not everyone understands it or even would want to call London home, but I do. And everything that has happened - the good, the bad, the indifferent - has happened to make me more certain of that feeling of finally being home when I am in London.

I know that people say that home is where the heart is, and I think that is true. So I must be leaving my heart here, hoping to return sooner rather than later. And while I am not leaving my heart with any one person while I am gone, I am leaving all the tangible and intangible things I love about London here, willing myself to return. So look out for me, as I will be coming home sooner than you might expect.