HOME • noun • /həʊm/ • someone’s or something’s place of origin, or the place where a person feels they belong
I love how this definition doesn’t constrain you to one home only, but rather gives you the possibility to have a whole list of homes. There are so many cliche quotes such as “Home is not a place, it’s a feeling” and “Home is where the heart is” and even though I instantly go UGH whenever I hear/see them I couldn’t agree more. UGH again.
One would say I had a pretty wild childhood, filled with too many goodbyes, but also beautiful new places and so many amazing, different kind of people. I am no stranger to putting all my life in a backpack and heading off to somewhere, anywhere. I was far away from home anyway, so it doesn’t really matter where I am right? It took me years to realize something, to come up with my own definition of home, but it’s a definition that cannot be described with words. I came up with a list of homes, and each and every one gives me a different kind of feeling of belonging. And more than a list of places it’s a list of names with two hands that form a ring around me and I feel like a happy Saturn. Yay me!
Ljubljana and I are in a real love/hate relationship, and it can be easily described as complicated. Like, really easily. I noticed that everytime I go back there I see it in a different light, I see myself in a different light as well as I am trying to see where I stand in this small slovenian universe. I see the gaps, the cracks, but also the flowers growing through the cracks and I hear loud laughter, and I have to decide if it’s directed at me or is it rather a laughter that accompanies my own.
Even after all this time I still find it difficult to dive into the stream of my Ljubljana life, point in my life where I left it off the last time I’ve been there. And I find it even more difficult to leave it, to leave it abruptly with unfinished things and unsaid words with a little promise to myself that there’s always going to be next time.
The more often I go back, the more I feel I have the permission to be a tourist in my own town. As I feel more detached from this city I can put on different kind of glasses and see the city I’ve known like the back of my pocket from another angle, it’s a whole different pocket, ha. I am focusing on the things that would go unnoticed before. There’s a special kind of charm in this as well I’d say, but it also makes me sad as the vastness between me and this city grows bigger everytime I set my foot back on the cobblestones of Ljubljana.
Ljubljana is a small town, where there’s not a lot of things going on and it always fascinates me how empty it gets. The things that terrified me before, the sudden emptiness is now one of my favorite things to explore. It’s a new kind of sensation and even though it sometimes gives me apocalyptic kind of creeps I can’t stop, won’t stop.
Things can be hollow, but yet full. All these empty spaces have been a great canvas for thoughts that have been stuck in the back of my head for a while. A well mixed palette of reminiscence, joyful scratches of the past and spilled words of promise and wishful thinking.
Exploring empty spaces and filling them with memories old and new, painting it with the love of people who after all these years are not letting me go. And for that I’ll be eternally grateful and that’s why I keep coming back, to the many homes I’ve made back there. All the arms I call my home and I’ll hold onto for as long as possible.
Cheers to the mess we’ve made!