Home: Coming or going?

Is home where the heart is?

As I settled in for my 13-hour flight back to the UK, I felt a wave of nostalgia, saying goodbye to my home yet again as it disappeared into the clouds beneath me.

I didn’t feel this way at the beginning. Arriving at the airport in Malaysia I was informed that termites had taken over my room and that I was to stay in my brother’s old room. It didn’t bother me; after all, this was just a holiday – only temporary.

At the time I was more excited about the prospect of decorating my own room back in York, and the promises of second-year life. I spent my first days clinging on to the memories and people who made up my life in York, not wanting to lose sight of the sense of belonging I had come to feel for the place. Perhaps it was residual heat stroke from the unusually good summer weather I had left behind, but then, more than anytime else, home was York and I felt like a guest in my old house.

Slowly though, this feeling of unfamiliarity dissipated, through many warm family dinners, days and nights out with old friends and the usual drama that comes with spending too much time with the people you love- deep down inside that is.

By the middle of it, York became to me like a postcard memory of someone else’s life. My life was here; I was working 9 to 5 (well really 1 to 8.30 but who’s keeping track), making everyday plans and settling into the routine that makes life feel permanent, like home.

But of course permanent in this case was valued in a matter of months. Before I knew it, it was time to leave and return to what in my mind had become this cold, foreign, duck-infested land. And suddenly I was a teenager again, leaving home for the first time.

Now, back in York for a little over a month, I have blown my bank account decorating my own room, and am discovering that the promises of second-year life really just means more work and less fun. Yet as I settle in for Week 5 and all the mid-term stress that it brings, I can’t imagine anywhere else I could belong. My life in Malaysia has now become the distant memory; an intangible idea of what should be home to me.

This has left me quite confused, lost even, if you’d permit. Which, really, is my home?

Is home the home I come from, where I’ve spent the majority of my life, and where my family is?

Or is it the home I’ve come to? Where I’ll be spending most of my next few years at least, and where I’ve made memories, changed and grown as my own person?

Honestly, I don’t even know what to base my choice upon. So maybe the real question is, what is home?

Most of the definitions I found have either classified ‘home’ as a person’s place of residence or place of origin, in which case I have two homes, and I suppose I do.

This didn’t satisfy me though, as really both these definitions lack the real essence of home, and neither quite captured the fine line between a place you merely physically stayed at and a place where you really lived in.

But what I did realise was that home didn’t have to be a singular choice, that it wasn’t written in stone that a person could only have one home. It also isn’t a concrete structure, but rather a personal interpretation- a somewhat intangible idea.

If Maya Angelou were to be believed, I’m lucky to have found home wherever I’ve been. And as for the time in between where I don’t feel like I belong, I suppose we could look at it as a holiday away from home- only temporary.

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