Where is Home?

I ventured home this weekend and visited my friends and family, which sparked a questions I have grappled with my whole life: where is home? When is the exact moment in time when you call one location your home? What if you know that your whole life you might float around between a variety of cities? What do you call home? I started struggling with this question when I was in college. I was driving back from visiting my family in Chicago and in those past two weeks I had been in almost half a dozen other states and locations. As I sat there in the car, I realized that I was fulfilled seeing my family at home, yet I was anxiously wanting to get back to the friends I called my family at school. It was during that car ride that I realized home can no longer be an exact location for me or else I might go crazy with sadness. This realization became ever more true as I graduated from undergraduate, and more and more of my friends began venturing around the entire country and even world to all different locations. I feel at home when I pick up the phone and talk with them over the phone. So how do we define what we call home?

I felt even more confused this weekend over what really is home. I had thought for sure Dallas was my home, and right now I do call it home. I had assured myself that I did not want to live in Chicago anytime soon. And yet after a weekend in the city, seeing some of my best friends I have known since childhood, I realized that Chicago could work too. Is it more important to be in a location that makes you happy? For me that’s the warm weather. Or does it mean to be home when you are in the company of many of those that you love and cherish in life?

Home has to continue not being a location for me for some time. Its my siblings, parents, nieces, friends in Milwaukee, Chicago, Ohio, Michigan, Arizonia, Colorado, Nebraska, and Dallas. Home is when I pick up the phone and call them when I need to hear a friendly voice. Home is when I visit them and we talk about our goals and dreams. Home is in the people I cherish most in this life and will continue to be for quite some time.