If your soul is not breathing, then you know it’s not home

Over the weekend, I took my pencil and paper out and then tried to brainstorm some words that I can associate with the terms, house, and home. After brainstorming, scribbled down on my paper for the term, house, was infrastructure. Essentially, to me, house is only a concrete building.

On the other hand, Home, I had tons of ideas for. I wrote that home symbolizes comfort, peace, joy, and freedom. And, home is a place where you can bare your emotions and make yourself vulnerable. So, if I were to define the word, home, it is the space where your soul can breathe. It is where you can be just you. You don’t have to put any pretenses up. Just be comfortable and think however you want, doing whatever you want.

Usually, on the weekends, my roommate drives back home and stays there for the weekend. Whenever she goes home, our dorm room transforms as my home, my sanctuary. No one is there to constrain me from being just me. I don't have to be cautious of singing and laughing out loud. I do enjoy quality time with my roommate. But, a lot of times, when I am at home, all I want to do is to savor the essence of being alone. The moment my roommate returns from home, our dorm room regresses back to just being a room.

Image by Lessons Learned in Life

Another thing I wrote about home is, it goes hand in hand with freedom. When you don’t have freedom, you are, basically, imprisoned. If your space feels like a prison, then it is not home. So remember that the idea here is that, a house may imprison you, but a home never will. 

Also, even though houses shelter us from the weather, or any other natural calamities, it won’t be able to shelter us from the downpour of emotional catastrophes we may experience. Home, conversely, will always be that one place that will shelter us during times of emotional quakes. 

During emotional quakes, know that you'll be vulnerable. Know that your home is not a hundred percent pain/agony-proof. During those times, home will give you the opportunity to breathe, regroup, and stabilize. Mostly, for me, during difficulties, I turn and rely on my family for comfort and motivation. My family, in itself, is my home.

If you have read my first blog post, Sailing on a Different Sea, then I’m sure you are a bit familiar about my emigration story. In the last five years, our family has moved houses four times. During our first two years of stay in the US, our family functioned in a house, and not a home. “Why?”, you might ask. It is because not a single space on those places we stayed at were called ours.

For two years, while staying at a relative’s house, our family walked on eggshells. We had to be extremely conscious of not being too comfortable living there, because it wasn’t our space. No matter how welcoming and understanding my relatives were, my soul came close to suffocating. Of course, we were constantly thankful to them. After all, they were very generous in helping us. However, it was the first time in my life that I found kindness to be something troublesome. Because in its presence, the breathing space for my soul came close to being non-existent.

During the summer of 2015, we were finally able to get our own place. It was a two-room apartment. I had to share a room with my sister, but I was still giddy. It felt like my heart was going to burst from the anticipation of finally having our own space. A year after that, we moved to a new house, and I finally got my own room. So, now, I have a space where I can seek comfort alone, and do the things I want. I can binge-watch TV shows if I want. I can read books whenever I want, and I can cook and eat food whenever I like. And nothing is stopping me to do those things, because I am home!