There's No Place Like Home

That's how the words go right?

Dorthy standing there with stripier red shoes on clacking them together while saying "There's no place like home.." until she whirls back to where she considers home. Which just happens to be Kansas, with her blood relatives. 

This is how most people portray this word though. Like it's the place you have grown up & never want to leave because of it. Like it's the only place you can truly come back to to be safe...warm...welcomed....It's also the only place that you have family. Blood family that will love & accept you forever.

I can't help but strongly disagree with this poor view on a simple matter. 

Why may you ask?

For starters, I was adopted. So this whole aspect of "family" gets a bit convoluted in my book. To me "family" is not ALWAYS chosen by blood, but the family that has chosen to take me in from when I was small is not much family to me either. So how can you call it a "home" if the "family" that is there with you is more like people you have to put up with until you can get somewhere better in life? Cause you know they are the only ones that are, more or less, obligated to help you out because of legal action?

This does not fit into any kind of family to me. It sure as hell doesn't feel like a family from the emotions I have gotten from other people's family, & when it's the only thing you have to compare to you weigh it heavily against what you do have. 

According to Dictionary.com "Home" as a noun means...

1) a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usualresidence of a person, family, or household.

2) the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.

3) an institution for the homeless, sick, etc.: a nursing home.

Seeing how I have already touched on the first one, how about the second one. It indicates that there is more to a home then a place where you sleep & keep out of harsh weather, but that there is emotions behind it. That it is a place of domestic affections. So does that mean that home can be in more then one place for you? Cause I have those kinds of feelings many places...so can home be in more then once place?

Then the third one is rather self explanatory, yet sad in a sense. It is mearly a place that you can rest when needed or even die in if needed. I think I actually agree with the second one the most out of all of these.

So what does home mean to me if I keep ripping apart other people's version of it? 

I think the best way to describe my version of home with the simple saying of: Home is where the heart is.

For a long time I would ask people where their heart was to find this out...because I had no idea where mine was & if I started looking it might be where other people's have placed there. After all, it hates being alone...but it also hates to be seen.

So I searched & searched...& searched...& eventually stopped & decided that when it was ready to be found it would be. After all I didn't need it for anything I was doing at the moment. I really didn't feel like I had a home for it to come back to anyhow so what was the point of having it? It wasn't like I was using it after all. It was more of a weak spot anyways.

Recently though...it's come to my attention that I have perhaps found it in the midst of all the moving chaos that has been happening. 

In the past three months I will have moved three different times. I will have lost alot of things in this move & gained alot more for it, depending....but I think the most valuable thing is a place I can call home. A place where I can sit, smile & feel that if I show my heart a bit...it won't be completely shut down...but maybe even embraced. 

Though I shouldn't say one place in particular. It's places. 

I have many different homes in many different ways & I am proud to say it finally. I am more then thrilled to say that. I have several places I can go to be "safe." I have many people, not blood related, I am more then willing to call family. The best part of all is that I have found my heart to be able to divide among these that I have found in my collection of homes.

This person knows who they are & I am pleased to have them back in my life more then I can tell in words on a post to an internet blog of my emotions.

For me...home is where the heart is, & I'm more the happy to finally say it with the biggest smile on my face...

Welcome Home.

~Cyran J. Harrington~