When I was 18 years old, I ran away from home. Most people thought I was just going off to college, and I was, but I was also running. Running away from the values, the pain, and the materialism required to belong to the community that I was raised in. When I arrived to college, many of my friends communicated that they felt homesick. I couldn't relate. I felt really unattached to my home, independent, and ready for a new life. As the memories of sexual abuse resurfaced (nearly 6 years later), I began to better understand this detachment from home. It wasn't safe, subconsciously I couldn't wait to get out.
Not soon after I arrived at Loyola Marymount University in the lovely Los Angeles, I found myself sitting on the bluff with the ocean to my left, the Hollywood sign to my right, and the moon and the stars watching over me. The glitter of the city lights and the glory of the expansive view moved me to tears. It was my first experience of actually feeling at home. I was hooked: in that moment, I stopped running from the home I grew up in and started chasing this new found feeling of beauty and belonging.
My first priority when I left my family and gradated from school was to rebuild my home. I chose my apartments wisely for the last 8 years in the Bay Area. My spaces needed to be beautiful, relaxing, stable, and safe. So, I made them so: I chose refuges nestled in the mountains and by the sea so that nature would nourish me, I bought beautiful furniture to remind me of the beauty of life when I didn't feel it, and I invited my growing community to join me for meals. I chose to live alone for about 5 years because I needed the space to heal without interference or judgement from others. Eventually, as the rental prices in San Francisco escalated past my paycheck, I invited safe roommates into my home- both women and men. My home was beautiful and I felt that I belonged there.
Back then I thought that home was about geographic stability, material comfort, and social status. What I am learning now is that home is really about roots and roots are about connection. Home is about safety and safety is about clear communication. Home is about growth in tandem and growth is about expanding past perceived limits. Home is about making mistakes and making mistakes is about reconciliation.
As I have healed and found new family and new friends, I have began to learn about roots, safety, growth, and mistakes. I have began to learn about connection, communication, expansion, and reconciliation. These things until recently were external to me. As I have began to internalize them, it has become easier and easier to let go of the stability, materialism, and status of the home I thought I needed in order to embrace the truth that I can go anywhere with just the clothes on my back and a few dollars in the bank and still feel a sense of home. The beauty and belonging that I built into a specific external space became an internal reality inside of my own self.
I understand now that home is in the friends who have loved me, the ideas that have shaped me, the work that has challenged me, and the mistakes that have humbled me. More and more, my home is rooted deeply within me- a self that is committed to growth, well-being, and love. In the last month, I have sold all of my beautiful furniture and let go of the stability and social status I thought I needed, in order to live this new found concept of home more authentically. As I have let go, I have felt my first experience of homesickness. I am letting go of the materials that kept me feeling safe, putting physical distance between relationships that have sustained me, and leaving a city that I am most attached to. As I do so, I continue to remind myself like my friends did in college, that I am leaving one home only to arrive to another.
In the next week, I'll be moving to the East Coast for awhile to be with loved ones. I'm elated that I'm at this point, ready to explore new places and ideas, while still living out of a home deeply embedded within my being. I am proud that home is no longer a place that I need to run away from, it is no longer a space that I need to build or a feeling a need to chase, but instead it is a way of being that nourishes me into new life and follows me wherever I go.
Today I consider San Francisco the place where I'm from, the space that I learned what home truly is. I am confident that I can run away endlessly and still hold the sense of home that I learned there. I am confident that I can run back whenever I like.
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Photo credits:
1. LMU Bluff