Today is the last day of my two week break (weekends don't count) and it struck me that I still consider the place I am now, my parent's house, as 'home' despite not living here for over six years now. My flat in Manchester is merely where I live.
Part of this attitude might be down to knowing that at any point in time, I can be given my notice to move out, which doesn't help in terms of settling down somewhere. Not that I think it means you have to own your digs to make it your own. After all, my nan has lived in the same council house for the last 65 years - which is ridiculous on some level, as the rents paid in that time must have covered the actual value of the house several times over.
Perhaps you can't really have a home if you live on your own, that it's the people you share it with that make it so. In the house I sit in at this moment, where I grew up, my parents are still here and there's reminders of many others that add up to the feel of somewhere you can feel safe.
If anyone is actually reading this, I'd be interested in opinions and thoughts, as this has been playing on my mind for a bit of time now. I used to joke that "home is somewhere you can wander round in the dark without causing yourself serious injury", but I'm guessing that's actually a lot more to it...
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I have lived in my current digs for seven years now, and I still don't feel it is home. This may be, in part, because the house is always in a constant state of incompletion. Still, I wonder if my feelings would change if all the renos were done. I worry that they wont after all the work. Maybe, it's just me. When I had to escape the house I shared with two buskers and was forced to move back in with my parents in the flat I grew up in, the feeling of home didn't exist there either. The only time that I felt a sense of homecoming was when I walked through the door of my Westend apartment. I was in university and perpetually poor, but I refused to live with a room-mate. That wee flat was all mine. I chose where the art would hang, the order of the books on my shelf, the perfect placement of my stereo with a soft rug next to the speakers that I could lay back on it and sink into a song. That apartment was a refuge. It was home.
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