Home

For the past twenty years, I’ve never really had a home. Institutions, hospitals, they’ve been my main-stay. But where I am currently, in my shoebox apartment, this is probably the closest I’ve come. It is my space – that I share with fifteen staff.

I mean, I did get up yesterday to find a cupboard door broken and on the floor (having no idea how it got there), someone else’s dishes in the sink, a lamp and side table moved around, then picky me, books on a shelf not aligned the way I like them. Er, but ya get that. Which, overall, I guess I try to look at this stuff as signs of life.

Just not my life… just not my, well, it’s not exclusively my home… or is it?

For the past twenty years, my body also hasn’t felt like my own. Other people feed it, wash it, move it, dress it. Like sure I choose what to eat every day, use my preferred brands of soap and toothpaste, then oddly, I dress like a bit of a buffoon (with cool sneakers). But I dunno, some parts of me have just never felt like me – and honestly, I don’t know if they ever will again.

Self-reliance and body function, nope, definitely not overrated.

To read between the lines here, what I’m getting at, I’ve always wanted to be somewhere else, or most notably, someone else. This feeling of being at home in my heart has always eluded me.

Oh yeah… “happy new year!!”

But we know all this stuff, or at least you would if you’ve been reading my rants over the years. I’ve often questioned things like identity, purpose, place and fit.. been heartbroken at my level of dependence, blah, blah… all while simultaneously being thankful for the help that I do receive. I’m like this complex complexity, ever critical, habitually confused, frustrated, who also squeezes in those few signs of creativity and surprising ability.

Two secs, I’m talking too much shit and sound fucking insane, I really need a coff-eeeeeeeeeeee to lubricate the ol’ linguistic fantastico, haha.

Goonies, it’s on in the background – great freaking movie that.

*five minutes later*

Yeah, it’s this concept of home that I’ve been caught up in for some time now, or to put it more eloquently, to use that same ever so tightly buttoned hyperbole that I used before, being at home in my heart.

Aw.

That feeling of being safe, whole and content, kinda like, as an example, being able to sit in my own comfy corner, haha, in my own stink. Yep, you probably know the spot, the cozy couch with your butt cheeks permanently imprinted. Or, another way you might think of home, it’s where you’re happy doing absolutely nothing at all. Every hour is bliss. Every flicker of the television station, a conquest.

Urrgh, nope, I don’t have either of these, oh boy, and I really have been chasing down those ass imprints.

And yep, this is the journey that I’ve been on for some time now – haha, and this will probably be the same old shit that I write about for the next little while too.

Gimme dat bliss Joeseph Campbell!!

However, my journey thus far (particularly since moving into my apartment those three years ago), I’ve been focusing on “home” a lot as being an environmental thing – I want my home to feel like me.

Having nice pictures on the walls, having objects laying around that remind me of the good times, even frequenting that familiar restaurant nearby to cement that I am a local. Dame Edna, you put us on the map. But, I was wrong… hmm, or maybe half wrong (like, I do believe these familiarities are important too). Where I’m shifting my focus more toward nowadays though, again, it’s this fucking… um, fleeting… um, I mean feeling of home in my heart. It’s kinda everything.

What’s weird, literally, as I’ve been writing these last few sentences, I just twigged that a good mate of mine is currently launching a coaching program called Homecoming – yep, he’s on to something here. He’s also been onto this “coming home” stuff for way longer than me. So, dare I say it, he’d have many of the answers in this “homecoming” regard whereas I’m still figuring much of this stuff out.

Anyway, for now, writing feels like home. Such a good start to the year hey, to this whole process.

Fuck I love writing. It’s so nice to have a voice.