My home is where my heart is.
A phrase that's grown to mean a lot to me,
A phrase permanently inked on my chest,
Above my heart.
Before I get into it, I just want to thank everyone for the support on my first post, I was not expecting the engagement I got, and it really means a lot and I appreciate every single one of you.
While growing up in Europe certainly has its perks, it’s almost as if my life has been fragmented into different books. Spending three particularly important parts of your life in different places has some cons. In Middle and Highschool everyone around me was basically in the same boat, international. Kids and families from all around the world. From Philadelphia to Cape Town, Moscow to Sydney.
When I started College, that all changed. One of the most common question people asked was, “what high school did you go to?” and my answer wasn’t always the same. Sometimes I would just say “Germany”, other times, “Munich International School”. Of course, going to college in Maryland meant that the majority of other incoming freshman and every other student there pretty much came from Maryland or surrounding states and had been there their entire lives. Something I couldn’t even begin to relate to.
“What school did you go to?”, “Where are you from?”, “why Towson?”, “but you don’t have an accent” It’s safe to say, that my first few months in college was filled with questions about every aspect of my previous life in Europe. I dealt with it because it was easy, easy to answer questions about my past rather than try and carry a conversation about something else. But, once the questions ended, the conversations dried up.
I was an outsider, everyone I met had a connection to someone else, they had friends from high school, they had friends. I came in alone. Luckily, I knew two people that had started at Towson a year or two ahead of me and they helped me get a little more comfortable. So, I wasn’t 100% alone, but they had already gotten their footing and friend groups since they’d been there for at least a year already.
“Where do you call home?”
A question I’ve gotten a lot over the years, and the truth is I don’t really know. In one sense, I have 3 homes, but in another, I don’t have one. I’m “homeless” with a home (if that makes sense). This was true even before I got to college. In Germany I wasn’t sure if Sweden was my home or if Germany was or the United States. Nobody sits there and tells you “this is your home always and forever no matter what.”
I started thinking about it more the closer and closer I got to graduating High School. Where is home? Does it have to be just one place? Maybe its where my family is. But that couldn’t be. My sister is in Arizona, parents in Germany and soon enough I’d be in Maryland. So what does my heart say? And then I realized, “home” doesn’t have to be where I’m from.
Home is Sweden, where I grew up.
Home is Germany, where my parents are.
Home is here and now with my fiancé.
My home is where my heart is.
Sincerely,
An Introvert.
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