Going home is such a strange thing isn’t it?

I mean, I suppose it’s strange to call it strange since it’s something so familiar.

Familiar spaces and faces reminding you of who you’ve been and what you’ve survived. Echoes of your past that almost ache when your bones remember.

It’s all familiar.

So what makes it so strange?

What comes to mind is that time my college boyfriend flew across the world to visit me while I was studying abroad in Rome. For the two months prior, I bought Italian calling cards nearly every day just to hear the sound of his voice, even though we fought most of the time.

Wandering the cobblestone streets of Trastevere I often questioned my decision to be there instead of back home in his embrace, even though I had never felt so myself or so free.

Then came our reunion and it was like I didn’t even know him. I felt agitated, detached, and incredibly confused. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.

Sometimes going home feels exactly like that.

Like reuniting with a lover I’ve measured every moment up to, and suffering into the disappointment of even that union failing to measure up.

Like longing so deeply to feel the fulfillment of a homecoming, and instead looking forward to the next move.

Like returning to the one I thought I knew most of all, and feeling like an absolute stranger.

‘Cause when I’ve left home, wandered the world, and survived so many other faces and spaces.

I become a stranger in my own home. And I wonder if it’s home any longer.

But sometimes going home feels different from that.

Sometimes going home feels like… love.

Like all the times I felt the jungle hold me or when the blue morpho butterfly showed me which way to go.

And when I recollected my soul’s long forgotten melody singing to the sea.

When I looked you in the eyes and I knew that I knew you and it didn’t matter how or why.

Those nights when I danced across the fallen logs watching the sunset behind the purple mountains.

Watching the moonrise up from the ocean.

All the times I softened into your embrace because I trusted you despite anyone you or I ever portrayed.

And those moments of surrender when I cried just because something in the wind told me I was safe.

In the familiar embrace of a place that’s seen me through more than my brain could ever retain, I remember pieces of myself that I forgot I had forgotten. I see my shadows from new angles and I learn how to dance in darkness and in light. At times I like myself more or I like myself less, but I learn to let my love never change.

I open closets I left closed for eternities.

I clean out old drawers and I give a lot of baggage away.

I witness my changes and I learn to forgive because there’s really no other way.

I finally let go because there’s nothing left to hang onto anyway.

I surrender to the who I am in the where I am in the when I am
and let the universe take care of the how and why I am.

‘Cause that’s all I can.

To come home is to reunite with a long lost lover.

It’s just that the long lost lover…. is me.

So, I am home.

Always have been.

Always will be.