home is where the heart is?

Home is like love.

A word that rolls off your tongue with ease when ever it feels right? Perhaps when I was 14, possibly even when I was 18. Who am I kidding? It wasn't until I said goodbye to Love that I understood it's value. Isn't that just typical? Learning it the hard way or in my case a very fortune way. I wasn't the one to bid farewell just out of the blue one fine morning, but today I stand here uncertain if I could open my heart out of cowardly fear that I'll be blinded by fatal attraction. There is a reason why it's called fatal and not safe attraction. But with that said...it could just be I haven't met the right person, but really...how can you meet anyone when you're never in one place long enough to sew the seeds, water the garden and harvest the fruit? These days I seem to get all my groceries in disposable plastic bags...sometimes I recycle them and then I have a couple of my favorite eco bags. I'm just not rooted enough to know what I should be using instead of recyclables. It seems that everything I want is geographically out of reach and as I'm yet to learn how to bend time and space, as it seems that isn't on my or anyone's side.

As the saying goes "Home is where the heart is". I think as long as you can be selfish and keep your heart close enough, then you'll never feel like you want to be anywhere else but where you are right now.

Think of all the times you had plans to stay somewhere for the night, be it a friends house, your girlfriends house - in your city, when you were visiting, when you were on holiday,  when you were in a foreign country or even when you were just staying over for fun...how many times have you referred to that place as "home". "Let's just go home..." "I wonder what time your brother is coming home..." "What time are we going back home?" Today, while I was in the heart of the Japanese countryside camping with my colleagues and students who have become my dear friends that it struck me how loosely we use the word home.

It was very early in the morning and I was sitting on a chopped log talking to one of my friends, we were waiting for everyone so we could check out of our 10 person cabin, there were 18 of us but as we looked around we noticed that there was no one to be seen. "I wonder where the boys are...Perhaps they went to set up the somen stand for the barbecue " I said. She nodded in agreement and said "Yeah, but I think they'll come home first". And just as the morning sunlight warms my cheeks, a calming and illuminated conclusion over came my entire self. One that's so obvious, but so transparent that we oh so often miss the true essence behind the saying. That "Home (truly) is where the heart is".

In that very moment it was like an awakening of the soul, perhaps I'd just leveled up my character and I can now move on to a new era in my adult life. I am alone in this world. Before you start thinking that it's such a sad thing to say, it's really not. I say it with sincere independence and pivotal sensibility. These last few weeks have been me transitioning into my adult life, no more safety net, no one to question where I'm going and what time I'll be home. Regardless who you live with it's always courtesy to inform the other of your whereabouts, be it your mother, housemate, partner etc because you live with them or you have an obligation to them.

Right now, my life is in my hands and I can feel it just thriving with energy. I'm at the beginning, the start...this is it...everything before was just foreplay, a build up of intense trial and error and now where I go is really up to me. If only words could paint a smile of how sparkly my heart feels right now, the rush of blood in my veins have never sent such positive vibes to my thoughtbox about being "alone".

But you know what? I'm never really alone because I always have the most comfortable place in the world, the one place that makes you feel safe, welcome and warm with me all the time - home. It truly is where my heart is and it's right here beating.

Now doesn't that sound awfully similar to love? I don't really remember.