There is No Place Like Home (Click, Click)

A couple of things have gotten me to thinking about home and what home really is.  There are plenty of definitions from, "Home is where you hang your hat" to "Home is where they have to take you in when nobody else will.".  Like most things in real life, cute and witty sayings are pretty superficial. 

I'm fifty-nine years of age now and I've never had a place where I felt "at home".  I had a variety of homes in my childhood and a greaer variety of homes since adulthood.  Those have all bust been places where I stayed until the next place came along. 

I have been in the house where I live now for fifteen years.  That is over twice as long as I ever lived in one single place in my life.  Prior to this place the longest I was ever in one place was six years.  Then only a couple of times.  There has always been one reason or another for moving on.  However, I think my moving on days have passed me by and where I live now will be my "home" until I no longer have any need of a home any where.

None of the many places I've lived has ever felt like "home" to me.  They are just a house, a mobile home, an apartment where I live at any given time.  So, what is there about all these places that has kept me from feeling "at home' there?  I guess the first thing one would need to do would be to define "home".

Home is not a physical place, no house, not trailer, no apartment is "home".  "Home" is a feeling.  It is a feeling of comfort, of belonging, of loving and being loved.   Perhaps a feeling of being understood, being welcomed at all times and this could be the finest mansion or the meanest hovel.  Home is definitely not a place.

During my formative years we moved around quite a bit and I never fit in any of the places we lived if there were people around.  I was always and outsider to my peers whom I shared little to nothing with except being the same chronological age. 

Being in school was always stressful to me.  Being an outcast does that to a person.  Being "at home" was really not any better as I was a chicken's wishbone caught in an endless tug of war between my parents.  Even with them I felt like an outcast for one reason or another.  Though they both confided in me they would some day leave the other and "take me away" and it would then be just "me and them".  For me, living with both parents was trial enough but being forced to live with only one of them would have  been worse.  Much worse.

These circumstances lead me to spending as much time as possible away from my house.  At least that was a different time and I was free to wander the woods by myself whenever I wanted.  And, I wanted an awful lot.  The forests of Eastern Kentucky were where I felt the most peace in my life.  I was far away from the other kids who never liked me anyhow and my parents who aggraved hell out of me for several reasons.  I ate there and slept there but any other time I preferred not to be there.

Without going into unnecessary detail I can say even after my teen years I really never felt at home whereever I happened to live.  I was noticing today on the way to work and looking over the mostly flat South Carolina countryside and feeling how alien it all looked to me even though I've lived here for twenty seven years now. 

Over the years I've often wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a "normal" family filled with love and respect for everyone.  Perhaps it is the alienation from my early years that does not allow me to be comfortable any where and to feel "at home" any where.  The things that happen to us in our pre-teen and teen years have a profound effect on the rest of our lives.  Even when we realize that we still cannot change it as it has become a part of who we are.

I lived in Kentucky for thirty two years and I don't fit in there and have never felt at home there.  I've lived here in South Carolina a further twenty seven years with those same feelings.  And, as I get older, I think I'm growing more and more  reluctant to step outside my little cocoon no matter how mcuh I want to at times.  Maybe I just need new medications.  But, I find my ability to feel anything at all is fading over time.  Love, lust, anger, hate, fear or even interest in a lot of things is quickly becoming beyond me. 

I once envied those who felt comfortable in their own skins and seemed to fit in with family and friends.  Now I don't even feel that.  Yet, in my own purely academic way, I do wonder what it would be like to have a home.