Here is reader C’s response to the questions below.

• What does home mean to you?
• Is home somewhere you find, or somewhere you make?
• Can you be homesick for a home you never had?

Three years ago I was at my friend’s house. All five of my bestfriends were there, all sitting around the living room like we always were. I don’t remember what they were doing, talking, playing a board game, just sitting around before going out to get frozen yogurt. Meanwhile I was huddled in the corner talking to my friend’s dad. It was the end of summer and in a couple weeks I was moving away from home, away from everything I’ve ever known. I remember being on the verge of tears talking to him about how scared I was. I was complaining about how much of a homebody I was and that I didn’t want to move and I’d never make friends. I remember him consoling me saying “but you leave your home so much. You hang out with these girls almost everyday and you guys are always going everywhere” And I had a very simple response to him as I finally broke and tears started streaming down my face, “well these girls are my home.” At that moment all my friends that were eaves dropping on our conversation jumped up, ran over, and hugged me. At that moment I felt so incredibly at home, but in the most fragile way thinking that it was one of the last times this home would exist. 

Now, with years having passed and having lived in many different cities, I find myself thinking about home a lot. I was bouncing between the idea of home being a place, is it where I grew up, is it where I live now, or is home wherever I’m with my family or friends or the people I love. I always found myself so troubled with the fact that my home is so scattered now. I leave my home in Washington and get on a plane just to go home to California. But the home I’m going back to is not the home that I knew. People have moved, the people that are still there have changed, the city burnt down, the streets I grew up playing in turned to ash, people grew up, my dog died, there’s a new painting hanging above the fireplace and I don’t know when it got there, but the cherry tree I planted in the backyard at five years old still blooms every spring. After all this change I still call it my home though. I mean change is inevitable, I think it’s impossible to have a home that never changes because even if the home itself stays the same, I still change. 

What I’ve realized is that home isn’t a place, it isn’t people, home is a feeling. It’s where I feel comfortable and safe and loved. That may come from the people I love, that may come from the familiarity of a place. So I think home means many different things to me. Home is singing along to Harry Styles in the car with my mom. Home is falling asleep on the couch sprawled across my friend’s lap. Home is dancing around my kitchen while I burn the food I’m cooking for my friends. Home is my five childhood bestfriends all back together in the same living room after years of not seeing each other. 

So even with everyone moving away, and us rarely finding ourselves sitting in my friends living room talking about who knows what anymore, that feeling doesn’t go away. That’s one of the special things about home. It isn’t a finite thing. Just because I leave one home, it doesn’t mean it’s disappearing and it doesn’t mean that I won’t find a home again. Once I opened my heart, once I took risks, once I stopped living my life out of fear, my home grew infinitely. And now I don’t take that for granted, having so many spaces where I feel so at peace. Because after all that’s one of the best feelings in the world, the feeling of home.