Is This My Home?

It has been almost a year since I moved back to the place of my birth. Home.

There is the place where you're born, and maybe raised. The place where you learned to ride a bike, created secret hiding places, and buried stuff in the yard. There is the place where most -- or some -- of your family live. Where you went to school, maybe where you got your first after-school job, where you began to carve out a little space in the world for yourself. It is an address and a phone number you remember by heart. It is where someone is waiting for you.

Then there is the place where you feel most alive -- where you feel most yourself. A place where you can breathe. A place that feels open and full of possibilities. A place that speaks to you as if you were a long-lost friend or lover -- "You've been gone so long -- welcome back". No one is waiting for you but the place itself. And that feels like enough.

For some people, these two places are the same. The place where they feel most alive -- most themselves -- is the place where they grew up. Their roots are deep and far-reaching, giving them strength. The familiarity is both comforting and freeing. There is a rhythm to their life that was set when they were small, that marks the passing of the years in a steady beat.

For some people, these two places are not the same. One was chosen for them, one was chosen by them. One place was strictly the luck of the draw, one place was revealed -- perhaps by circumstances, perhaps by choice -- to be their "true" home. A place where they are not bound to the past. A place that is mostly "now" and "tomorrow". A place that lends itself to dreaming.

I have suspected, for quite some time now, that I belong to the second group of people. I don't really know why this is so. I have a few hunches, a few theories maybe. I think maybe I came back here to find out.