what is home?

[miss fortune]

I don't go back to my hometown very often, mostly for holidays and birthdays and that's it. It's not like I moved cross country or anything, I grew up a little over an hour from where I live now. It's not like I don't like my family- they all have a great sense of humor and every single one of them can cook. I like my parents' property as well... it's all forest, wetlands and prairie which they've put a lot of work in on and it's quite lovely... I just feel really uncomfortable going back to my hometown and home county because it's as depressing as fuck

I grew up outside of a small town in a farming community... most people who had good jobs had jobs at the auto factories in the area which went the way of most auto factories in the midwest... away. You can SEE the poverty when you go through town... houses boarded up with abandoned cars in the front lawn, house trailers with broken foundations, about half of the handful of businesses that were there closing for lack of business... and almost worse you have the people who have been in that situation for many more years, since the family farming era collapsed... farmsteads with barns in dire need of a new roof, farmhouses with plastic over the windows because heating is expensive and new windows are not in the budget, tractors left over from the '60s that are kept running on good repair... the effort that's put in to maintain what little is left makes my skin crawl in a way

Occasionally I'll stop by a local business over the holidays- picking up a forgotten item at the last minute or putting gas in the car- I'll run across someone I went to high school with, someone who had seemed bright, like they had a future and they're ringing up my fucking groceries... they got stuck in the event horizon of the town, unwilling to leave those and that which they know... they make small talk and I feel awkward because I DID get away and haven't really kept in touch with anyone... the worst is when I get asked about "life in the big city"... I don't feel like I fit... but then again, I never did

I guess it just makes me question the meaning of home a bit with the holidays and travel coming up... is your home where you're from or where you made it? what is home? are roots important and should they be maintained or can you move on? does anyone else feel incredibly uncomfortable in their hometown?

 

[Lux]

I guess it just makes me question the meaning of home a bit with the holidays and travel coming up... is your home where you're from or where you made it? what is home? are roots important and should they be maintained or can you move on? does anyone else feel incredibly uncomfortable in their hometown?

I was thinking about this today actually. I know for myself home isn't where I was raised or where I had formative experiences, the place I grew up doesn't make me uncomfortable, but I feel pretty much a 'nothing' for it. Home to me is.. where I like the feeling of being there and I made that for myself where I am at now.. for now. *smile* It may change again, who knows?

 

[miss fortune]

[MENTION=7647]Lux[/MENTION]... funny how the holidays make you think

somehow after writing that I got the frost quotes about home stuck in my head... is it the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in? is it the place you don't have to deserve? is it something else?

I guess I've never really felt a sense of belonging in any one location... I've always felt most at home on the move in a way... I'm more comfortable wandering the streets than in a stationary place. I like our house because it gives me a set of walls to protect me from the world when I need a chance to rest, but do I feel some sort of deep connection? have I ever?

 

[Lux]

I like to think that everyone can have a home, whether they by a rule have to deserve it or not. I really think home is an internal feeling. It's so subjective, and therefore new and always lovely.

 

[LEGERdeMAIN]

I'm at home on many pieces of ground around the country. I must be comfortable in a place to call it home, I must be confident in my supremacy over what occurs within the boundaries of my homes at the times I am there. Home is where my body rests, my mind can shut down.

 

[miss fortune]

that's a happy thought

I kind of have to wonder whether home can be more of a sense than a place, which I think you've mentioned... I feel at home in certain actions and with certain people, sometimes even strangers... and there's always the thoughts that one feels at home with, the ones that you ponder and dwell on almost like they're your friends in a way... I suppose home doesn't have to be a place. I've felt just as at home sitting beside the man on the balcony in another country and reading as I have in our house of 4 years... or talking to a stranger on the phone while in a strange city after midnight just because it was necessary to get a little understanding... I guess you're right, in a way it is internal

 

[miss fortune]

[MENTION=7760]LEGERdeMAIN[/MENTION]... so your lair!

and that makes sense as well...

 

[Lux]

I equate home with comfort and warmth.. with acceptance and security, with those intact, I can make a home.

 

[miss fortune]

the man seems to have a very location based sense of home... if he's away he wants nothing more than to get back to his house, his cats and his people, and once he's here he's content with life... my mother is the same way. I guess that's always confused me in a way... the thought that home is a place or is it not?

I have trouble feeling a real sense of belonging and relaxation almost anywhere... bad habit of always having my guard at least slightly up and a tendency to watch and listen to everything going on like a guard dog. There are places and people though, that if I go there, will let me be me instead of wanting for me to be something else (and I'll have to oblige them... flip the switch and be the other version of myself)... that's a nice feeling in a way

 

[SilkRoad]

When I go back for holidays to the place where I grew up (an ocean and a continent away) I tell people I'm going home to visit my family. And when I'm there, I talk about the place I now live as "home."

Sounds wonderful, as though I have many homes. Unfortunately, I'm getting older and wondering if I have a real home at all. Moving away is very good for you in some ways and totally messes you up in others.

 

[miss fortune]

I was even confused with the wording in the OP because of that... depends on where I am and where I'm headed as to what I refer to as home in a way... the city is my home unless I'm visiting my parents, then I tell them I'm going home to visit my parents... may be a universal because I've never been questioned on it...

 

[SilkRoad]

What I've found about moving away, and so far away, is that you can make a new place your home, but you're always questioning it. And I have these moments when I just feeling frighteningly dislocated from everything and everyone. However, when/where I was growing up I didn't exactly felt like I fit in...it was a nice place, but by the time I left I'd been pretty sure for several years that I had to leave sooner or later...

 

[miss fortune]

I can understand that... I never thought that I'd end up in my hometown and moved away as soon as I could do so... and moved to somewhere rather different at that. It makes things confusing and probably moreso if we're talking continents and such as far as moving goes

I'm almost waiting for a place someday where I automatically feel like I belong, but I know that it's probably asking for too much... like a "soul mate" or something *gags a bit at having used that term*... there's hope though because it really sounds nice

 

[sprinkles]

Home is what's good for you. For some that is a place, for others not.

Where I'm from is definitely not home. That would be a rather horrible home to have. It's basically a hole in the ground now anyway - I looked up the satellite picture a while ago and everything is gone. It used to be a street with houses on both sides (half of them abandoned when I was there) but over the years they've been burned down or torn down.

The whole street is empty now just about. The house I stayed in is totally vanished with no sign of ever being there. The land is useless because nobody wants to live there. I don't think you could pay somebody to build there because of the bad surroundings and crime.

I've moved around since then so to me home is not really a place, nor where I'm from.

 

[Rail Tracer]

I guess it just makes me question the meaning of home a bit with the holidays and travel coming up... is your home where you're from or where you made it? what is home? are roots important and should they be maintained or can you move on? does anyone else feel incredibly uncomfortable in their hometown?

I was raised in a different home than I currently live in. As much as I had great experiences with that home, I know for sure that that place is a depressing place. It is practically what you would call the ghetto these days (crime has gone up since I last left the place a decade ago - I didn't notice any crime while growing up there.) No way and no how will I ever go to that place to live.

That said, I still live in the same city I was born in, so the neighborhood isn't my hometown, but the city is my hometown.

In all, my home is where I feel comfortable with right now, and it is the home I currently live in.

However, this place, like my childhood home, will always have a special place in my heart if I do end up moving, whether for better or worse.

 

[wildcat]

I don't go back to my hometown very often, mostly for holidays and birthdays and that's it. It's not like I moved cross country or anything, I grew up a little over an hour from where I live now. It's not like I don't like my family- they all have a great sense of humor and every single one of them can cook. I like my parents' property as well... it's all forest, wetlands and prairie which they've put a lot of work in on and it's quite lovely... I just feel really uncomfortable going back to my hometown and home county because it's as depressing as fuck

I grew up outside of a small town in a farming community... most people who had good jobs had jobs at the auto factories in the area which went the way of most auto factories in the midwest... away. You can SEE the poverty when you go through town... houses boarded up with abandoned cars in the front lawn, house trailers with broken foundations, about half of the handful of businesses that were there closing for lack of business... and almost worse you have the people who have been in that situation for many more years, since the family farming era collapsed... farmsteads with barns in dire need of a new roof, farmhouses with plastic over the windows because heating is expensive and new windows are not in the budget, tractors left over from the '60s that are kept running on good repair... the effort that's put in to maintain what little is left makes my skin crawl in a way

Occasionally I'll stop by a local business over the holidays- picking up a forgotten item at the last minute or putting gas in the car- I'll run across someone I went to high school with, someone who had seemed bright, like they had a future and they're ringing up my fucking groceries... they got stuck in the event horizon of the town, unwilling to leave those and that which they know... they make small talk and I feel awkward because I DID get away and haven't really kept in touch with anyone... the worst is when I get asked about "life in the big city"... I don't feel like I fit... but then again, I never did

I guess it just makes me question the meaning of home a bit with the holidays and travel coming up... is your home where you're from or where you made it? what is home? are roots important and should they be maintained or can you move on? does anyone else feel incredibly uncomfortable in their hometown?

Uncomfortable? An understatement.
The old bus terminal is gone. You arrive in hell. You cannot find the way out.
Tramcars are still there. How to buy a ticket? They do not sell tickets any more.
You have to lodge, and eat. The old hotels are gone.
A cab goes by. You raise a hand.
Take me to the nearest hotel.
Do you have a reservation, sir? We are all booked up.
Back to the bus terminal. Where are all the buses?
They are under the ground, Sir.
Where is under the ground?
It is very complicated, Sir.

Never go back.

 

[ilikeitlikethat]

This part of this neighbourhood.

Also, other places, like this other place too, in my neighbourhood, I guess and, at the corner of Denmark Street & Charing Cross Road (towards Tottenham Court Road), London, England too --
I guess.

Those places, and also Westminster, Hyde Park, Oxford Street, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus and, China Town and; all over that general area too, basically.

I'm also tempted to say Brixton, Streatham and Norbury too. (Camden too).

Oh yeah, and Croydon (of course).

 

[Lark]

To be honest I dont think of anywhere on earth as home, perhaps I'm attached to a romantic notion of Ireland, sometimes, and I like greenery rather than hotter, drier climates like Spain or Malta where I have travelled and I even found the greenery in Germany and Luxemburg when I travelled there was different to home.

Although I wish I had a job which I could easily transplant about the place, like being a writer, because I feel that my present job thethers me a little to one place.

 

[ilikeitlikethat]

Something [MENTION=7280]Lark[/MENTION] said that I mis-read that made me think of this;

I guess I should add places that are home and feel like home when I'm not at home;
Willow Grove, PA - Basically my place of residence in the US and in Pennsylvania and; Seaside Heights, NJ, my place of residence in New Jersey, although; I must admit, PA felt more like home, and -- I think that's because, it was, out there, or something. In New Jersey, it was this place in Seaside Heights, or, something. NJ is cool.

I mean, I'm basing all these places, from this part my neighbourhood to Seaside Heights New Jersey and the board walk there on places that I've been to and know and, feel like home to me. I've been to many places still, but these are my home places.

 

[Poki]

Home is where I feel like I can do whatever I want. Its usually where "my" stuff is. I go to my parents and I get bored and it never feels like home. Not even when I ended up living there for a bit after me and my ex seperated. Even when my parents left on vacation and I had the entire house to myself I went in the kitchen to eat, everything else was left untouched. I was either going somewhere out of the house or I was in my bedroom. The bedroom was my home. I went on a business trip for a week. The hotel felt like home. I had a pool, a hot tub, a workout room, bed, and a bathroom. I was set for the most part. I went to training came home, went to grab a bite to eat, rested for a bit, then spent the night working out, swimming, and in the hot tub. Home is just where I feel comfortable I guess.