Home

– Do you dream about home?

– Sometimes.. They say home is where your heart is. If I don't feel I have a home, does it mean I have no heart?

– You do have a home.

– I have a physical space where I live, where my 'stuff' is. But the feeling is different. Home is not just a place. It is also time. Time spent there, events that happened, memories. It makes you feel rooted, safe, connected. And when you go to a different place, all of those things are still there, at home. You can always 'come home' and feel safe again.

– Can't you?

– No. I feel that my home is.. inaccessible. Like it has been taken away. When I go there, the street is still there, the house is still there, even some of the people are. But home is gone. Everything has changed. It is no longer the city I grew up in. The happiness is not there. The safety is not there. The memories are still in my head, but they are no longer alive in that place.

– No longer alive?

– Detached. I walk the streets and they are a hollow copy of what it used to be. And I can't get back.

– Do you want to?

– Sometimes.. more than anything in the world. So yes, I dream about it. Less at night though, more daydreaming. Walking down the street in another country, the way the sun reflects on the leaves reminds me.. and I am transported. Just for a few seconds, I am walking down my street. Can be anything really. A smell. The way sunshine warms my skin. The warm summer breeze. I know, if it was just a few degrees warmer it would feel like summer at home. So I adjust it in my head, and I am there. Almost like teleportation. It is not helping much though. You get there only for a second, and then back to reality. Can you grieve after a place like you grieve after a person?

– Do you think you are grieving?

– I don't even know anymore. I miss it, and it's such a mixture of feelings. Anger for inability to get there. Hate towards the people who took it away. Gratitude that it was there. Hope that I will feel home again someday.