Home

You can’t ever really go home. That’s the saying, isn’t it? I never understood what it meant until about 7.6 seconds ago.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “home” lately. About my friends and family I haven’t seen in 6 months. About the comforts of my old bachelorette pad—the one I spent a long time saving and working at a 9to5 office job to afford. About the cat that used to run up and greet me at my front door and snuggle with me when I thought there were ghosts in my closet.

I miss all these things, and if I gave up tomorrow, admitted defeat, and retreated to this familiar place with my tail between my legs, I would probably find it to be, well, not so familiar. It would no longer be my home, but a place more foreign than the one I’m in now. Even only after 6 months, friends will have been living their lives in a state of change, working towards homes with significant others and achieving their own career goals, forging their own paths to happiness. My old cat will still belong to her new family and I definitely couldn’t afford that bachelorette pad anymore.

Most prominent of all though, I know I will see things differently. Not for better or for worse. Just differently.

Forever in my life up until this point, home was where the familiar was. It was where I could go and put my feet up after a trying day, where I could go seek advice from my parents, and where my friends and I would prepare to go out on our own adventures together.

But out of sheer necessity, the concept of home has had to change for me. What is home now? It’s really become ephemeral, or maybe transitory is the right word? To get through my lonely days and scary nights I have had to become comfortable with the notion that home is wherever I am in the present. It’s more a state of mind than a tangible place.

Although I’m still adjusting to this idea of home, I’ve learned some things about my new mental space. The Chateau Dudys is a little messy, a little broken, a fortress of sorts, always confused, and excited for what’s to come. I have my weak days, ones where I look up one-way flights back to Canada, but overall I’m learning so much about myself and know if I stick it out here, my new home will grow to be more resilient and adaptable than ever before.