home

home is the place in your life where you feel most comfortable. maybe it is the place where you grew up: your parent's house, your old neighborhood, or your birthplace. maybe it is the place you come back to everyday, or the place you work in. maybe it is simply the place where you rest your head each evening or the place you find your family. for me, home has been nothing more than that key that i can't quite stroke with my pinkie finger; the same key which takes you back to the beginning... ... starting over. home has never really had much to do with family or location in my life. my "home life" growing up wasn't much of a home and wasn't much of a life. i found the true meaning of homeless early on and was forced to learn quickly how to take care of myself. i was eventually able to find comfort in my friends who were endlessly willing to help and were full of support. with time i came to realise, as i've mentioned before, that my friends have always been my family and the only true home i've ever known. even then, however, my sense of home has only ever lasted a few weeks at a time and is something i haven't had a hold on in the last 3years. i write this not as a sob story (i'm too hardened to care for sympathy) but as the end of a recent revelation. i went for a weekend trip to my parent's house, my old neighborhood, my birthplace about two weeks ago. i left the district around 6am saturday with an emptiness in the pit of my stomach. my instincts, something that i've learned to know, recognise and trust, were telling me to stay in dc. my car stopped on the shoulder for the third time just before i reach sugarloaf mountain; now very aware that i should turn around and seriously considered climbing to the top to watch the sunrise before returning to my apartment. instead, against my better judgment i eventually continued on my trip and unfortunately fell victim to a disaster of a weekend that not even a fallout shelter could have protected me from, proving once again that i should always follow my instincts (it's gotten me this far). what i had realised that saturday morning that made the drive to my "hometown" so difficult was that i was in fact leaving home to go nowhere. my home has found me here. it's beautiful smile has filled my life and for the first time ever i'm not worried about it leaving. thank you for giving me a home.