The Curse of Never Being at Home

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Anyone who has ever lived in more than one place, whether that place is two neighborhoods in the same city or two countries on opposite sides of the world knows this curse well.

To fall in love with a place and have that place feel like home is a privilege. To find that feeling in more than one place is a curse.

Because here’s the thing about finding a place that feels like home. When you’re not there, you wish you were.

And when you have two, three, god forbid, four places in the world that feel like home, you will always feel homesick for one of them.

Unfortunately, you cannot be in two places at once. Otherwise, I would be in Mexico City and San Jose del Cabo or would it be San Jose del Cabo and Seattle. Maybe Rome and San Jose? Mexico City and my parent’s living room? You see what I mean.

Places that didn’t feel like home

I have had the privilege of living in a few different countries over the years. They didn’t all feel like home. South Korea was an experience that forever changed me, but I don’t yearn for it.

The same can be said of Switzerland. The very first place I ever called home that wasn’t the northeast of the United States. I met Luke there, I fell in love with travel and chocolate and train journeys. But it was never home. Maybe I was too young, the idea that somewhere else besides New York being home simply didn’t cross my mind. How naive I was!

No one will be surprised to learn that Lithuania doesn’t make the cut. Utena impacted my life in many positive ways and I loved living in Europe for two years, but I never once landed in Vilnius after being away and felt like I was coming home.

Places that feel like home that never were

There are places I have never lived that felt like home. Beautiful, magical, Cambodia. An unlikely choice amidst all of the other places that feel like home to me. And yet it did. I spent a month traveling through the country on a whirlwind 5-month backpacking trip and I cried as the bus crossed the border into Thailand. I was so sad to leave this place and the people in it. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever return and it broke my heart.

Italy is home. With its chaotic cities, its laid-back approach to la dolce vita, its warm and hilarious people. I feel like I belong here. Like I should have been born an Italian. Every time I return to Italy I wonder why I don’t just figure out a way to stay. It feels like home in part because it reminds me so much of growing up in New York, especially Rome. The city has a soul so similar to New York and I feel so comfortable there, so welcomed, so at peace.

Technically I’ve never lived in the UK. I have stayed for many months at a time over the years that Luke and I have been together and I am so grateful to have several places around the country that feel like home. The rugged Peak District, the city of Sheffield, the rainy Lake District and pretty much any country pub all feel like home. It’s a country and culture that I feel deeply connected to and one that I am grateful to call my second home.

Mexico wasn’t always home

You may be surprised to know that Mexico wasn’t instantly somewhere I felt at home. It took a few years of working at it for Mexico City and eventually the entire country to burrow its way deep into my heart.

When I moved to Mexico in 2016, I had a different idea of what home was. It was elusive. A feeling I didn’t quite understand and thought I would never experience. I thought it meant permanence, I thought it meant stagnancy. I was opposed to both vehemently so I did my best to ensure I avoided the idea of “home.”

In an attempt to make some friends, I met up with a fellow travel writer also living in Mexico City. We talked over cups of coffee, sitting outside at a cafe in the not-yet-hip Juarez neighborhood.

She said as soon as she arrived to Mexico for the first time, “it felt like home.”

I sat stunned. “What is that feeling exactly?” I should have asked her.

Instead, I shook my head and said something like, “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that anywhere.”

But I couldn’t help thinking, what if I never felt that?

As you can tell from this essay, I soon realized that not only would I feel that feeling, I had already felt it many times.

It took living in Mexico, learning the language, slowly learning the culture, getting to know the people in my neighborhood, and traveling to distant parts of the country that made me realize that you can learn to love a place. It was with time that I began to be accepted by my neighbors and enveloped into my community.

With time and patience, I think anywhere can become home (yes, even South Korea and Lithuania). It’s a feeling that you can grow into, one that you can create with time spent on the ground, time spent opening your eyes to the things that make a place special to you.

And that’s what happened with Mexico.

What is home?

Maybe we should have defined this at the start. But that would have ruined the flow of my storytelling, so it had to wait until the end.

Or maybe I’m still figuring it out, this idea of home and what it means to me and so I put off defining it for as long as I could.

I believe that the feeling of home changes. At least it does for me. Some places feel like home even though I know I’ll never live there (sorry Cambodia). But I feel homesick for them anyway.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives three meanings for the phrase “at home”.

1. relaxed and comfortable : at ease
2. in harmony with the surroundings
3. on familiar ground 

This is annoyingly concise. I keep trying to think of ways that these things are untrue or to prove this wrong on a more emotional level, but I think these three things sum up what makes a place really feel like home. You feel at ease, you are in harmony with the people and places around you, and even if you’ve never been there before, it somehow all feels so familiar to you.

That is exactly what home feels like for me. I wonder if there are any other places out there in the world that could feel like home.