To Be Home
Home is not where you’re from – it’s where you’re supposed to be. I’m currently visiting the family for the holidays and honestly, I’m homesick. It’s been the single defining emotion I’ve felt during my stay thus far in the house I grew up in: homesickness. I’m not visiting home because, well, this isn’t my home. Merced is. I miss the calm days and calmer nights. I miss the small town life. I miss my independence. I miss the solitude. I miss the place where I finally broke free from my family and my cradle and became my own person.
I’ve only been visiting my family for less than a week and it’s become unbearable. Every waking moment, I want to go home. Santa Ana’s where I’m from, but Merced is where I’m supposed to be. Right now, I’m feeling imprisoned more than anything else. I wanted to go home next Monday right after Christmas, but my family pressured me into staying at least until the new year.
To be home is to feel safe. To be home is to feel free. To be home is to feel that you can be yourself without judgement, and to grow into the person that you want to be. It’s where you, and you alone, decide your path. It’s the intangible warmth you feel from knowing that you’re content. It’s difficult to describe with words because it’s different for everyone, but it’s a feeling that you’ll certainly know when you feel it, because nothing else in the world feels quite like it. It’s not a place, but an emotion.
I’d like to go home.