Being Home

It's funny, calling this apartment home. It has just been "the apartment" rather than "my home" for most of the time I've lived here. But somehow it's changed.  The change isn't just the framed doily on the wall. After all, there is still clutter I have to deal with all over (yes, my organizer would be a little disappointed, but it's not too bad). There are still 3 plastic totes that I need to sort through and organize. 

The apartment is still beige, except for the doily and the large photo of a yellow hibiscus a good friend gave to me a few years ago and the three smaller photos of purple flowers my BFF gave to my mom when she was sick.

My sofa is still black leather with no slipcover, but my Ikea chair is now in unbleached cotton rather than black. And I have to wash the unbleached ottoman cover because I use it as a table and it's a trifle used-looking.

The Oregon Coast isn't home anymore. That's kind of weird, too, except that neither I nor my mother live there anymore. So it's a place I love where some friends of mine live. Seattle, oddly enough, is still home, as much as I was glad to leave it over a decade ago. That's probably because people I love live there, people who I deem family and who have me there for Christmas and who I've known for a very long time. And because enough time has passed that the dislike I built up toward the city has dissipated. I don't know when that happened.

As much as I enjoyed staying with my friends for Thanksgiving and as comfortable as I was there, I am very glad to be back to my own space. This was not always the case. I mean, here I am alone with no one to play with. (My Houston friends are completely different from my Dallas friends and my Seattle friends.) I'm in an apartment that until recently did not feel like home. But now I feel I am home and I don't feel lonely: I am a text or an IM or a phone call away from many people.

Perhaps this is like my other mental and emotional changes: I've finally internalized what I've been learning intellectually. Perhaps I'm beginning to internalize the concept and feeling of "home" so that home is wherever I am, plus it's where my stuff is (which makes a storage unit in Oregon also home).

Whatever the reason, I'm looking at the things that I feel don't belong — the clutter, the old Ikea chair cushions, the unsorted totes — and I'm thinking that I want to change them, organize them, get rid of what doesn't belong. Because my home is organized and tidy; because clutter in my space clutters up my mind; because unwanted or unneeded things cause me to feel burdened.

So here I am, sitting on my less-than-perfect couch in my less-than-perfect home and I'm feeling comfortable and reasonably at ease. I'm home.