Heart is Where The Home Is...

 

I get asked quite a lot on my travels...

 

"Do you get homesick?'

 

It must be close to people's hearts, this homesickness thing.
 

 

Or perhaps I am close to people's hearts. 

 

It warms mine to think people would be that concerned about my well being.

 

In reply? I tell them 'no'...but I don't really go into the full story. 

 

I will now. 

 

 

There is no such thing as homesickness when your actual home was a nightmare.

 

My memory of the horror that was my 'home' still gives me nightmares. 

 

I woke up with one last night. 

 

I suppose I always will; the legacy of domestic violence on a small vulnerable, impressionable child seems to last forever.

 

I can get through the day OK...

 

But nights...?

 

Some nights are forever. 

 

My life now is mostly good. 

 

I don't get homesick...because I'm not sure what it even is. 

 

I don't even know what 'home' is. 

Yesterday, I was having a can of Fosters and looking at some of the old beer commercials from when I was a kid. 

 

I get homesick doing that, occasionally. 

A sick feeling...a yearning for...
 

 

Something...lost.

 

Something that was.

 

Or maybe something that might have been. 

 

I can sometimes imagine what it would have been like, watching these very same commercials...

 

and TV shows...

 

& listening to the same music...


Through the eyes of a child NOT abused by his father.

 

I get a little...nostalgic for that. 

 

Whatever that is.

 

But I try not to dwell on it too long; what might have been. 

 

I figure it's OK to get a little wistful, every once in a while...

 

But really?

 

My life right now is as good as it has ever been.

 

In fact it seems pretty perfect. 

 

I'm not sure what I could possibly change to make it better. 

 

Do more to help others, I guess; but that is up to me.  

  

So...to a person who doesn't really know what 'home' is...

 

to a person who's present is so beautiful... 

 

If I had to give you some idea of what home might mean to me??

 

 

It's not a place as such...an actual physical place...

 

Let me put it this way. 

 

When I was a little boy, my dad would get me ready for school by pulling a comb viciously through my knotted sleepy time bed head. 

I would plead with him to stop, by saying something like

 

'my parting doesn't go there!!'

 

He would reply, growling,

'YOUR PART IS WHERE YOU PUT IT!!'

 

 

That always stuck with me. 

the rest of my life. 

 

I guess it always will. 

 

In order to live with the terrible memory of my father...I like to pull off little variations of some of the things he said. 

I would change this one slightly, to;
 

 

"Your heart is where you put it."
 

 

For when I think about it...my heart is my home. 

 

& I carry my home around with me like a trailer.

 

 

So really...wherever I happen to stop, and hitch my heart trailer?

 

That's my home.  

 

& it's the people I find there.

 

The kind souls who make me feel at home.

 

 

Unless I have a heart attack...or customs seizes my heart at the border...

 

I'll never be homesick again. 

 

No matter where in the world I am...

 

 

My heart is my home.