Home.

I want to go home. 

I don’t know what that means, but I want it. I always think it any difficult situation. “I want to go home.” But it doesn’t make any sense. Where is home? It’s not my house, because I want to be home then too. I can hate my house and want to be home.

It’s not my heart, because I can be unhappy with myself and still want to go home. They say “home is where the heart is,” but that’s not my home. That’s just a different house, in another building.

It’s not my family, because I could be with them and hate the time spent. That’s not a home, that’s a people.

I want to go home.

Why? Why do I want to go home so badly? Why is it that in every dark, dank, depressing encounter, I want to go home?

I don’t have any control over it. It springs up out of nowhere. A sudden flash of depression, a pang of loss, “I want to go home.” A slow ache of isolation, a bloom of rooted unhappiness, “I want to go home.”

It’s a visceral reaction. A word vomit that navigates its way from my toes, up my spine, through my throat, all the way up to my brain. I lunge forward, gagging and choking at it as it naturally falls out of my mouth, “I want to go home.” Goosebumps tinge my body, prickling its way through my skin and touching my fingers. It leads its way to my fingertips as I touch my temples, “I want to go home.”

My head lurches forward, suddenly overcome with the need to be in another time, another place.

Home.

Home isn’t a happy memory, and it isn’t an unhappy one either. It’s where I want to be.

Home is hiding under the sheets as a child, shielding yourself from the monsters that lurk in the dark. You see the shadows of outside the window crawl up your wall towards your safe haven as they threaten and knock their way through. Your fortress of solitude is home.

Home is your first kiss, awkward and sweaty. You close your eyes as you inch closer and closer, until you crash into each other and find solitude in warmth. Out of breath, your lungs about to give, you open your eyes once more and gaze into each other’s eyes for the first time in a new light.

Home is accidentally staying up until dawn because no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t fall asleep. One, two, three times you tried, and yet sleep would not give in to you. The refreshing feeling of the new morning meeting the tired, weighty bangs under your eyes.

Home is the flu shot you get every winter. The needle pierces your skin, renewing your immune system, and yet it stains your skin with a kiss of a dull rainbow. Blue, purple, yellow.

Home is your first school dance, stepping on people’s feet in an adolescent panic to look decent. Their hands in yours as your sweaty palms mix with theirs and the music spins your brain in spindles of threads.

Home is your first heartache, when the one you so deeply cared for leaves you for the first time. It caresses your chest with its sad, rhythmic movements and your denial fights for your attention. It leaves you in the dark, with windows full of shadows.

Home is hiding underneath you sheets when that darkness comes, hiding from the treacherous emotions you knew would come. Your warm breath tickling your nose as you wonder when those creepy shadows on your wall will go away.

I want to hide underneath those sheets. I want to go back to my first kiss. I want to stay up until dawn just because even though it’s a school night. I want to...hide. I don’t know why, but

I want to go home.