home is....

according to dictionary.com, home is defined as 

• a house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person, family, or household

• the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.

when you ask around, most people say home is defined as where the heart is. so what does that really mean?

back in may, my parents moved to wyoming. away from where the house i grew up in and the place i called 'home' for so many years. this move happened shortly after i up and moved to thailand for 6 months. since it happened after i moved to thailand, i think i sort of just ignored the fact that my parents were no longer living in my childhood home in dry fork and ignored the feelings that went with it. 

yesterday, i looked through the online listing for my home and the pictures attached to it. the pictures are of a house. an empty one. but it isn't empty to me. it's full of years of love and memories. i couldn't see the empty house. i could only see it filled with all the things it had been filled with from the time i was 7 years old. but for some reason, this was really hard. it hit me out of nowhere. my parents don't live there anymore. 

i sat at work all day trying to figure out why i was all of a sudden so upset about my parents not living in that house anymore. after school, i took off for a run and tried to get out the reasons why. i came up with the fact that i'm angry. and for what reason? not angry at my parents for moving. not angry at myself for moving away to go to college. angry and lost because now where's 'home'? 

the house in dry fork is simply put, a house. it's a building, a place of residence with no one residing in it. what made it home for so many years? definitely the affection centered around it. the love. the good, the bad, the laughter, the tears. the memories. all of the above. 

the phrase home is where the heart is is one that doesn't really apply to me anymore because my heart is sort of everywhere. it's with my parents, who now live in wyoming. it's with my sister in oregon. it's with my boyfriend in utah. it's with my aunts, uncles, and cousins spread around the u.s. it's with my grandmother in washington dc. it's with my friends who are spread out all over the world. it's with the memories of my home town and childhood in vernal. and now, physically, it's in thailand, where i think part of it will always stay. 

so, what do you do when you realize your 'home', or place where affections are centered, isn't where your family lives anymore?

you find home in yourself. home, to me, is where i am. it's where i feel comfortable. it's where i feel uncomfortable. it's where i can be me. it's where i've been and where the memories are. it's where everyone i love is. it's in me.

yes, it's been really hard to accept that 'home' isn't in dry fork anymore, but now i get a new place to make memories and share with my parents. i also get to take that home with me forever.

for the past 5 months, home has been thailand. and now that my time here is almost over, i get to carry a little bit of this home with me forever, inside me.