Home Is Where My Stuff Is.

"Home is where the heart is..." is a poetic notion.

It’s almost too easy for me to admit this to myself – I’ve never been one to bend the truth and I can whole-heartedly say that for me, home isn't where my heart is. Or ever has been.

Home is where my stuff is.

The concept of “home” has always been unclear, and its meaning, a jumbled mess of feelings and people. I'm a mismatched puzzle piece..

..and everyday I feel like that is more and more true.

For years of my youth – long, tiresome years, I never felt as if I belonged.
See, I believe that home is supposed to be where you feel the safest and where you feel the most loved. I've never experienced that luxury. There was never a time when my house actually felt like home. Throughout my years filled with fights, insults, violence, countless nights of being alone, of self sufficiency, relying on only myself. I feel it's a parent's duty, as the two people who decided to bring me in to this world, to nurture their child, ensuring it has the leg up on life it deserves, no? Well what happens when one party drops that ball and fails such a duty? In a fucked up kind of way, or pretty glass slippers for Christie.

Never have I truly felt wanted, appreciated, safe, valued by said one party. 

and I am unable to escape this toxic environment that has been created around me.

Despite the lack of support, the "you're useless"-es, the lack of energy and will to try, I pushed myself to get a good education and I graduated within the top 10% of the state for my English exam results and I got myself a good job.

Fuelled by my determination to not end up anything like my 'father'.

 

Even though I have some place where I put my shit, I feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist.

I stopped wanting to come back to this place a long time ago. I rush off to work to relieve her frustration at living in a foreign place. It's like taking an aspirin for a toothache. The pain may subside, but unless the underlying problem is treated, the discomfort will always reappear.

What I’m saying is, if I never came back to this specific house, never saw this specific person who occupies that space again, I wouldn't care. I have no concept of home or family anymore.

I am determined to leave this place. No matter how hard the people around me make it. I'm stronger than I give myself credit for. These people will not break me.
I am my own goddamn magic pumpkin.