The place that feels right when everywhere else doesn’t.
It’s coral tulips blossoming in the spring
When everything else is a cold touch
In the winter.
Sometimes, it’s someone.
A crippling longing for hands and eyes
That feel so distinct,
You could tell them apart from millions.
The gentlest form of
Infatuation, intimacy, inhabitance.
Other times it’s somewhere.
Somewhere on the horizon,
Where the pine and the grass find shelter
In the same place as that house
You feel safe in.
Perhaps, it’s a fine line.
That fine line where the sun meets the sea,
Like firecrackers to tranquility,
Swallowed by the earth,
Until it is, yet again, rebirthed.
And even then, with all the places and people
Swarming the earth as bees do in a hive,
I would still choose you,
Time and time again,
To be my home.
To be my eternal, everlasting home.
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So, how does one find home?
When confronted with this question, I often think about this one feeling. You know the one, when you lie down after an exhausting day, stretch your legs and wiggle your toes. It feels as if all the weariness melts from your pores. Like the sun is cradling you in an embrace.
This feeling surpasses levels of comfort previously unknown to you-- almost like a surprise every time. I like to think that this is how finding home feels like. A series of little surprises of comfort, cradling you when everyone and everything else feels like an exhausting day.
Still, what is home, really?
Well, when it comes to a person, I suppose you feel it right away. A prominent addition to your life that looks intrusive, but you don’t mind. Sort of like dew drops on a leaf. Twinkling, candid, underrated. When you think someone is your home, you’ll want to live in them. You’ll want to cook, sleep, wash your laundry, and love in them. You’ll want to look at them and think nowhere else in the world feels more compelling than being with them. For them. Near them. It’s almost as if the world is missing out on them, and you’re the only one who gets to see them raw.
However, if you go around searching for your home, you will find hotels—temporary places to reside in. You will latch onto every person you feel is inhabitable. You eventually find out that they are also a home for travelers, for the lost, for people staying for a night or passing by. Suffice to say that you don’t find the person that is your home. Instead, they find you.
Perhaps it’s easier when it’s a place.
The funny thing about finding a place that feels like home is that it consumes you. It consumes you until it feels like you’re falling into an endless bottomless pit of nostalgia. Nostalgia can be a great feeling, but when you miss a faraway home, you crumble. You crumble to dust with a thought. But that’s what makes having a place as your home so inexplicably electric. It squeezes your bones with a longing that feels like branding iron to the skin.
But I have noticed that when asked, most people will tell you that home is where their loved ones are or where they grew up.
When I think of my home, I find my mind swimming, trying to grasp one image out of the thousands that pour like a merciless waterfall. I imagine myself among flower fields and olive trees, picking the pieces of myself lost in the soil of my home. The parts of myself I left behind, hoping to collect them again someday.
What you may not realize is that you can find home in fine lines.
You may find it in a person or a place, but what if you find it in fleeting moments?
Tender is the night that holds the stars in its arms, unbothered by the sun across the horizon, mocking it. Yet, that brief time of day where they both meet simultaneously in the evening sky, everything feels serene. This is a fine line. A fine line I find myself getting lost in, especially on days where everything feels rushed and overwhelming.
The lovely thing about this is that you don’t know when the moments will come. You may be sitting on the beach and love how the sand feels against your skin or the way a particular food you eat reminds you of home. Perhaps the way you feel every time you take that first sip of tea is the closest you have felt a sense of belonging in a long time. Either way, it’s a reminder. A reminder that even when you’re unsure about the place you belong in, these moments exist to remind you that they’re your home, even for a little bit. Even for a moment.
As Talking Heads once said “home, is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there.”
Written by Hala Nasar, a dear friend of the attic diaries.
@halaa.21 on instagram.
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