Home

I have an uncanny ability to take words and make them mean whatever I need them to mean in the moment. The same goes for music. I can think so abstractly that any song can be transformed into words relating to me some how or another. I have experienced a lot in my life. You would be hard pressed to find a song that I couldn't relate to somehow.

When I hear a song, and truly listen to it, I will either 'feel' it or not. If I feel it, it goes on my Ipod. I have days and days of music on my Ipod. Everything from opera to heavy metal and everything in between. My music tastes are as complex and diverse as I am.

I like a lot of music but particular songs speak to me. They evoke emotion, sometimes overwhelming. They bring memories to the surface quite easily. Unfortunately, many of the memories are deep rooted and sad.

I have a lot of songs that make me think of my current relationship. Phrases that typically come up in these songs have to do with feelings of comfort, peacefulness, or being 'at home'. At home. Not exactly a place I associate with love and feeling good.

Home for me was a place of isolation and loneliness. It was a place of maturing too soon. It was a place of abandonment and unsafe love. Home was where you never lived up to people's expectations, where diversity was shunned upon and where perfection was all that mattered. Home was always being ridiculed and put down. A place where your imperfections were brought to attention over and over again. Home was a place of physical dominance and mental torture. Escaping home was where the comfort was.

So when I hear phrases, like "feels like home", "I'm coming home", "reminds me of a place called home", I have to blank out that moment in the song. At no point does my relationship feel like home ever did. And thats what's sad. I don't have a cozy feeling when I say home. I cannot relate to those that do.

So I as drove many hours this past week with my Ipod playing, I realized that home doesn't have to be where you grew up as a child. That home is really where you are safe, warm and loved.

"I am already home"