"Home is where..."

The only constant in life is change. To embrace its moving body requires skill and bravery - both of which I seem to possess, but sometimes lose in the face of fear.

My parents take due credit for raising me in so many different countries, and while I was sometimes carried kicking and screaming to the next place, I was glad eventually. Our moves where always a physical and spiritual journey, with one constantly lagging behind the other. Sometimes I was already dreaming of the next destination, other times I couldn't conceive another neighborhood than where I was at the moment. My roots were sometimes stubbornly strong, other times loose and fickle. This impacted my relationships, especially romantic, as I'd play the perfect lover while my heart was impatient to fly away.

While I could blame the constant change for developing into an avoidant attachment style, the view I choose to take is to smile upon it with sweet fondness and realize; my parents taught me to bloom where I was planted. This comes with another conundrum, when people ask: "what was your favorite place?" or, "where is home for you?"

My answer always feels greedy: “All of them”

It isn’t quite possible, and it wasn’t always quite true - I had favourite spots, favourite people, but now, putting them all into the mixture of my heart, they mould into one beautiful painting. Streaks of Bahamian blue, blushes of American red, tufts of British clouds and lines of unmoving Switzerland. I see my friends and memories, and within them all I see myself. Going back now, I may struggle to recognize the city as I saw it through my childish eyes, but it will be in a flash of a moment that I see it suddenly, everything as it once was, and I hear Home call out to me.

Home is a mutual love story. It is where your heart sings and the place replies with a harmony. And the symphony continues to grow.