"Home is where the heart is" they say, but the word "home" is a strange one for me these days.  It's all muddled up in my mind and has kind of lost its meaning.  For most people the word "home" is used to identify a single location-- the place where they feel most welcome, most comfortable.  Where they fit in best.  For me, the word "home" is used to describe two places.  I currently rent an apartment in the city where I just completed my Master's degree.  I spend the majority of my life in the apartment with my new furniture, and my text books, my bills, and my cookware.  The rest of my life (a cumulative couple of months a year) is spent in the North East.  That's where I grew up.  That's where my parents live, and where I have a bedroom in a large house.  A bedroom with pink walls and white furniture and my favorite Teddy Bear, aptly named Teddy.

When I'm in my apartment, Home is my parent's house.  When I'm outside of my apartment but in the city where I completed my degree, Home is my apartment or my parent's house.  When I'm in the North East, Home is my parent's house in the North East.  My family freaks a little when I slip up and accidentally call my apartment Home, so I'm constantly censoring my thoughts and back-tracking my sentences to be sure I don't accidentally call my apartment Home in front of them.

But here's the thing.  Despite the two places and their respective titles of Home dependent on my location, I'm not sure any place feels like Home right now.  When I'm in my apartment if feels too temporary to be Home.  The contents are mine, but the building isn't mine.  I'm residing on someone else's property when I'm in my apartment.  I have to follow someone else's rules.  I have to hear the voices and sounds of others from the apartments around me.  On the other hand, I spend so little time in the North East now that it feels like the ghost of my old self is floating around in my place when I'm there.  It doesn't feel like my Home.  It feels like younger me's Home.  When I'm sleeping in my pink room, I feel like I'm shrinking back into the mold of what I  was instead of who I've become.

Perhaps this feeling of not belonging or fitting into any of my residences comes with the territory of being a young adult--not a girl, not yet a woman (thanks Brit).  I'm too old for the old me, and too young for the future me.  I'm hovering between the two and probably will for a while.

So, yes "home is where the heart is," but maybe I need to try a little harder to plant my heart somewhere.

Keep on thinking,
Josie