Home is Wherever Your Heart is

We often hear the term "Homesick". We may even say it ourselves from time to time. We express the feeling of sickness where we are depraving and longing for this so-called place we call "Home" when we are traveling for a long time or simply miss the smell of our mother's cooking after countless nights of microwave pizzas and instant noodles in your college dorm room. 

But how do you define "Home"? is it simply just the house you grew up in? your room with your dusty old dolls on your bed? the old radio in your living room that needs to be smacked for a few times before it magically turns on? or the sound of your siblings fighting over the remote control?

Approximately four years ago, I experienced what it feels like to be homesick for the very first time. It was the first three weeks of my university life in Japan, and it was the first time I have ever lived without my parents or family around me. I didn't know anyone well enough yet, I was still trying to figure out the seasoning for the fried rice my mother usually makes for me, the feeling of waking up in a different timezone from my family and friends was still an odd idea for me.  I claimed that I was deeply homesick. I stated how I missed my best friends who lived 15 minutes away from me, my cat who would wake me up in the morning by sitting on my face. I missed my usual go-to cafes and restaurants in my neighborhood, but most of all, I missed my family. I missed the sound of my brother playing games from his room. I missed help setting up the table before our daily family dinner. I missed seeing my dad wash his car on the weekends. I missed my mom and her yummy pancakes. 

However, all I was worried about was the thought of going home after a year, it felt too long for me. I wanted to go home back to Indonesia as soon as possible. Of course, this was a struggle I could share with some of my floormates at that time, it did not matter how close or how far their home countries were from Japan, they all missed the same things I did. It was until my first spring break when my mother and my cousins came to visit me, I was over the moon. Even though there was still half a year until I go back to Indonesia, seeing my family already cured enough of my homesickness. However, after my mother gave me the unpleasant news about how she thinks her marriage is falling into pieces, it made me reconsider everything I thought I believed before. 

Six months later I came back to Indonesia, stayed at my childhood home, my usual neighborhood, experiencing the same old hecticness of my hometown, ate the same food, and met the same people. But the feeling of my homesickness was yet to be cured. I couldn't put my finger on it. I still saw my parents and my brother on a daily basis, I still slept in my old bedroom where I used to stay up late with my best friends, I could still order my favorite dishes I used to order every weekend. I was lost, I didn't know what was missing, everything I thought I missed was right in front of me yet I still felt hollow and distant from my "home". I was still longing for the feeling of going back home even though I was in my bedroom, clenching the bedsheets that were older than me and staring at the ceiling and the crippling wall paint because of decades of rain.

I realized that even though I was back home, nothing was the same anymore. I did not wake up with the sound of my parents chattering over the news, I didn't have to set up the table for dinner because we all just took our food to eat in our own rooms, I didn't fight with my brother over the remote control because none of us was eager to watch television anymore, there were no small chit chats between my family about how our cat almost got away. All that exists was silence and the tension between each and every one of us. I realized then that home was not a place, it was a feeling of safety and warmth that only certain people and moments could give you. Home is where the weight on your shoulders is lifted, home is where you feel content, home is wherever you felt like you belong.

Eventually, I realized I had to let go of the thought that my "home" that I had in mind still existed. It was gone, it was physically there, but it was gone.

I then was in a constant state of searching for my new so-called home. I searched high and low, finding where and when would I have the feeling I have been craving to feel since I left for Japan. I visited the old coffee shops I used to visit, visited my friend's house, my cousin's place, and such. Yet I still felt lost.

Throughout reading this whole article you have may thought this would end up with a paragraph revealing where, when, and how did I find my new "home". Devastating to say that I never found it. However I am no longer searching, nor I am still lost. Although I did experience an epiphany; 

Wherever, whenever, and whoever makes you feel belong, makes you feel warm and accepted, and makes you feel alive yet content, you are home. Because home is wherever your heart is.