The other day I was asked to define what home means. What a tricky question it was! For me, home was in the outskirts of Budapest for a long time. Until I was 20, never did I question that I home could mean anything else, anywhere else.
Then I moved abroad. The first months were hard. I was in Latvia, it was spring, and I wasn't sure what I was even doing away from the city I felt so comfortable with. Then, over time, Latvia became familiar. I wanted to make it home. I made friends, I decorated my room, I found my café where I became a regular. Then I moved again. There I was, in the UK, hardly able to afford anything beyond a can of peas for dinner, without proper accommodation. I questioned my decisions again and missed home. Home in the UK meant the first bicycle I bought for £40, used, on Gumtree. It was mine, it took me wherever I wanted to go, and although it had an ugly dark green colour, it was a survivor, just like me. As I found my roots in the UK, I started feeling at home. Cambridge had become the first and only place where I ever felt I truly belong: a place where my urge to learn and grow was nothing unusual, and a place where there was always someone to have an intellectual conversation with. When the pandemic hit, that home turned upside down as well. I had to leave, and so did many of the long-term friends I made. I returned to my childhood home, and I felt startled. Have I not moved at all? Have I not created a new life? Strangely, being back in Budapest made me feel stuck, away from where my future home was going to be. With the pandemic, I also started working remotely, and travelling while working. The more I saw, the more I knew, the more I started missing those who are my own. My community, my friends, people who know who I am, so I don't need to explain each and every decision I ever made in my life yet again, once again, to someone else.
Home to me is a feeling. It can be a place, like my childhood home in Budapest, or an object like my bike in the UK. It means safety, comfort, it means attachment, it means that I want to be there, I want to be with it, and I want to return to it when things are not easy. You can be given a home, you can create a home, you can leave home and always return.
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