[Home] // District One // CB

I like the idea of home, but I don’t think I understand it much anymore.

That’s among a long list of things I don’t understand. Home, cruelty, ambivalence. How others can be so numb to everything happening around them.

I grew up with naïveté in a comfortable house, but reality still eroded away the best of my family. Everyone and everything scattered to the wind. Dad’s ashes. Mom’s attention. My certainty. Time ticked slowly while I tried desperately to make life feel real again.

When Mom got distracted by grief, I felt like I was being thrown out into the cold. I latched onto anything that would stick: Career training, working, sleeping too much. I sought distraction above all, biding my time waiting for the future to happen, as it’s wont to do.

Home became something of a daydream, a feeling caught in moments. A gentle sunrise, steam rising from a coffee mug, a fleeting smile amidst the drudgery. The numbness began to pull at me too, and I longed for things that sent my heart racing.

I found that feeling again in the pages of a book. I found it as I scratched away at the future. I have hope that things will get better, but there’s no room in this house for What Ifs and Maybes anymore. I have to make it better all on my own.

Right here. Right now.

Happiness comes from loving parts of the world that make me feel comfortable in my own skin, and I love the scattered things. The curls of my hair, the courage and uncertainty that mingle in my heart, the knowledge that it’s okay if I get this all wrong.

It’s fine.

It’s beautiful, even.

I’m building this shit from the ground up.

X