He moved at twenty-three and never came back for more than a week at a time. The city he grew up in had almost nothing he wanted anymore. The people he loved there had different lives now. He had built something real, somewhere else.
But when he talks about going home, he always means the place he left. Never the place he built.
He’s been in his adopted city for sixteen years. He still hasn’t given it the name.
Home is one of the most complicated words in any language. It can mean the place where you were shaped. The place where you are known. The place you return to. The place you belong. For people who left their origins and built something elsewhere, the word splits in two and both halves are true and neither is complete.
You can carry a place inside you that you would not choose to return to, and it can still be the place you mean when you say the word.
I’ve lived this. The city you grew up in having a hold that the city you chose never fully develops. Not because the chosen one is worse. Because the first place got you when you were still being made.
He is home, in his adopted city. He is from somewhere else. Both things shape him. Neither one is wrong.
When he visits the place he left, what does he feel that he doesn’t feel anywhere else?
The immigrant experience, the experience of anyone who moved far and stayed long, is a perpetual negotiation with belonging. You are of two places and fully of neither. You carry the original like a second language, always accessible, never quite native anymore.
He calls his hometown home. He lives somewhere else. For sixteen years, both things have been true.
Some things worth sitting with:
- What place do you call home, and is it the place you live or the place you come from?
- Is there somewhere you would not choose to return to but still carry inside you?
- What does home mean to you that no specific location can fully provide?
You might also find yourself in She Had Plans Every Weekend. She Still Came Home Feeling Empty..
Inspired by a real story shared anonymously online.