It was home. I had put my stuff on the walls and hung all my clothes. The bathroom smelled of my perfume and the shower had remnants of my lavender bath salts from the warm bath during the last snow fall. I had taken four walls and I had turned them into my bedroom where I would unwind after a long training session and throw my feet up to take a sigh of relief.
I just moved across the country a short time ago. A short time to get settled, learn my way around and create a new routine. A short time of building new friendships, putting myself in uncomfortable situations and feeling content with new sounds coming from my surroundings. It isn’t the first time I’ve made a big move, but this was the first time I put any sort of dependence on anyone else for the process.
At first it seemed to be a good fit. Like two puzzle pieces that created the solid corner of a great piece of art. The corner pieces stayed intact long enough to build other puzzle pieces around it forming a picture. It seemed to be coming together both snug and right. But as more of the picture started to form, I realized that other puzzle pieces from a different puzzle somehow mixed into the box, ultimately ruining the integrity of what the finished piece was supposed to be.
I tried fixing the puzzle, but my counterpart didn’t take time to fix it. They in fact brought more pieces from that second puzzle in to disrupt the art we had made. Suddenly, without a moment’s notice, the puzzle dropped to the floor, breaking apart the hard work it took to bring these puzzle pieces together.
Now having left those four walls and turning a new place into my home, I reel on the broken piece that I identify as me. I realized that all the time I had put into the hard work of building this puzzle, I had been building it under the wrong four walls from the beginning.
I sit here now, grateful to have left that puzzle piece behind, realizing that the new art I am creating, solely focused by me, means more than that first piece of artwork ever could. I realized how quickly home can become four empty walls left over from a spill of waves that I once knew as happiness in this space. I further realized even deeper that the saying “home is where the heart is” means to me that wherever I travel to bring my whole authentic heart, is where I can build a home.
Four empty walls, four filled walls; it doesn’t change the heart you carry into creating a new home wherever you go.
