015 | My Apartment Is Not Home
You can pack a home up in boxes; you just need to find a house to put it in.
I’m not from Maryland. I moved there when I was 16 and left when I was 18, but because my family resides in the state, I call it home.
Whenever we moved as kids, which was very often, my Mom would tell us, “You can pack a home up in boxes; you just need to find a house to put it in,” which I now believe to be partially correct. My family, my people, are what make someplace home.
A kitchen where my Mom is cooking, a chair where my Dad is napping, a basement where I hear my brothers playing video games, and a dinner table where my sister and I are making a mess with beads or clay with her iPad propped up watching reruns while she tells me what it’s like being younger and cooler than I will ever be. The door is never locked and we almost always have a guest, because our home feels like a home to all. At night, we sit in the living room and watch the nightly news on NBC followed by an episode of The Big Bang Theory. We’ve seen every episode so many times, I think we should be compensated personally. Half of our inside jokes are Big Bang Theory lines, equal parts cringe and sweet.
The house in Maryland is, by far, the largest house I have ever lived in. Growing up, I was used to tight quarters, shoving all my things into crevices in my bedroom to make it all fit, which turned out to be a blessing of a skill when I moved to the city. I didn’t mind it at all growing up; as the oldest, I got my own room, and we all hung out in the common space anyway, since our bedrooms were the size of Coke cans. At one point, while I was living in Stuy Town, I realized my closet was about the same size as some of the rooms I lived in growing up.
Spending time in close quarters gave me a better appreciation for apartment life than many of my peers have. I don’t yearn as much as they do for an office, a guest room, or other pleasures of a larger apartment or a suburban home. The feeling of home doesn’t just exist within the confines of a house; it can be outside, too. Those things would be nice, but I know I don’t need them to have a home.
I feel lucky that I grew up in tight spaces that created tight relationships.
I feel lucky I never left home because I was running away, but because I was told that no matter what, I would always have a home to come back to.
I feel lucky that I grew up with the utmost support. My family never told me I had to go to college or had to move out of my home. I could have told my parents I was joining the circus to train squirrels, that I identified as the color purple, that I’d changed my name to Miss Bucket Potty Pants, and that I needed to train the aforementioned squirrels in our basement. They would be okay with it, would help me build a purple squirrel circus setup in the basement, and would support me as long as I had a plan. That’s what a home is. That’s what a home does.
All of this makes it much harder to leave, wherever that may be, and come back to my apartment, which doesn’t feel like home because my people aren’t there. I like the little life I made here in my one-bed railroad, but I wonder how long it takes for a house to start feeling like a home after all the boxes are unpacked, the kitchen is set up, the chairs are in place, the table is covered in beads, a video game console is purchased, and the nightly news plays.
Every time I go back home and see how much I’ve missed, it makes me want to go back. This pain is the sweetest gift.
I hope one day I can make a house feel like home for someone just by being inside, and I hope it’s just as hard for them to leave.
Photos from my weekend at home:
