home
Confusion furrowed my brow as I stood face to face with my childhood bedroom, unrecognizable elements mixed in with tried and true gems.
Going home
I went home a couple of months ago. It had been more than a year since I stepped foot inside my childhood home. Pride kept me from making the journey. I felt as if returning home, even just for a visit, was somehow standing in the way of me making Paris my home. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t just on exchange, I wasn’t studying abroad… my adventure wasn’t temporary.
I’ve long felt a calling to explore, to go and see the world. A slight disdain creeps up when I see people staying in their hometown. Now, logically, I understand the many benefits of staying or returning to your hometown. Family, friends, networks, history, and familiarity with every turn. To me however, it was failure. I wanted to prove, not only to myself, but to everyone, that I had moved; that I was creating a life for myself, not just a fun one-year experience.
Finally, missing my family, friends, and my dog, I made the trip home right after my birthday.
My room, subjected to a makeover by my mother, was not how I remember leaving it. An eerie sensation of being somewhere familiar, but not recognizing anything crept over me. I walked around rediscovering my room. Trinkets, toys, books, medals, drawings, pictures… together they made up the mosaic of my life. My terrible memory was jogged and in a flash my life in Chicago came flooding back to me.
Two roads diverged
When I moved to Paris, I took just one picture and two paintings. The picture, of my best friend and I, stands proudly on my nightside table. The paintings, one painted by a friend of mine of us two and another friend and the other painted by me, act as the primary decor in my living space. It’s hard to tell who I was before I came to Paris just by looking at my apartment.
The dissonance of the spaces surprised me. Two completely different people occupied those spaces. One, a colorful, loud, social, and athletic little girl, stubbornly set on painting her walls neon green and decorating her space with shells she collected; the other, a creative, adventurous, and cultural young adult. Her space sparsely adorned with paintings and pictures collected from different parts of the world, hardly anything dating more than a year, a newborn life.
It’s hard to put into words the feeling of being home. Settled. Peaceful. Content maybe? More than ever I realized that home isn’t a place, more often than not it’s a person. I’m lucky enough that it’s people for me. My time in Chicago was spent reminiscing and remembering.
A breeze whistling through dewy grass as my family sits on the deck, pulling apart my mom’s homemade bread… is there anything better?
Belting old R&B hits with my friends from the windows of a cruising car with the warm late summer wind in my face… is there anything better?
My dog’s wet nose letting me know that it’s time to wake up and greet the day… is there anything better?
I can describe incredible experiences I’ve had in Paris and throughout Europe in the past year, but there will always be something special about home.
Back in Paris
Even though by the end of the two weeks, I was ready to be back in Paris, I left with a different perspective of home. Just because I subject myself to constant changes does not mean that I’m failing by staying put for a while. Going home for me was going back to myself and remembering the little girl with the neon green walls who wanted to see the world.
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