Longing for a place to call home

Stacked boxes, roughly taped shut, jagged black letters across the sides, indicating what’s in each. Giant garbage bags, full, not of trash, but of clothes, blankets and pillows. “Handle with care” – you know that anything in those are fragile, breakable. Glass and crystal, things that are worth a lot. Mostly of sentimental value. There was always this inclination to hold on to things with no real monetary value and care for them more than anything that was actually worth a good buck.

“Handle with care” – a whole life summed up in one phrase. A life out of boxes and bags, never really quite unpacking everything. Never really staying in one place long enough to call it home. And worst of all, never really feeling like you’re at home anywhere. Don’t get comfortable, it won’t be for long. It’s only temporary. Don’t get attached. You don’t want to get attached. Rent, don’t buy. Don’t invest; wing it for the time being. You’re afraid to call it home; not because you don’t want to. Because you don’t feel it, and that’s one trick you refuse to play on your mind. You don’t want to settle or get settled.

“Handle with care” – a whole life summed up in one phrase. My life.

I’ve spent my whole life longing for a place I belonged and that belonged to me; a place to call home. Home is where the heart is they say, and mine just didn’t seem to settle anywhere.

I’ve spent my whole life living out of boxes. Boxes carefully packed and stored. In nooks and crannies, in rooms and attics. Some close at hand, some shoved all the way in the back so that they’re almost inaccessible. Boxes full of memoirs and memories, things and experiences, people and emotions. Things that made me want to stay and things that made me have to go. Things that are worth being kept and things that are only worthy of the junk yard. I keep everything. Everything gets boxed up and taken with me, from place to place, from temporary home to temporary home.

Pandora’s Box. All of my boxes, all of the ones I’ve marked “Handle with care”. Each one of them a different Pandora’s Box, with a different evil lurking in wait at the bottom of them. They’re the only things that I can really call mine. And that because I have kept them hidden away and shut tightly. I open them up now and then, just for the hell of it, just because sometimes the pain of the sting that lies at the bottom is the only thing that makes me feel anything. It reminds me that somewhere, burried deep inside, behind everything else, I still have the capability to.

“Handle with care” – a whole life summed up in one phrase. Everything seemed temporary, as if there was an invisible expiration date on everything I touched, an open ticket to somewhere else ready to be handed to me. There was always one part of me that was with one foot out the door. Because I never found somewhere I wanted to stay; or somewhere I would be wanted to stay. Why unpack, why get comfortable if I was just going to get up and leave at some point? But there is nothing more permanent than the temporary.

There have been many places that I grew into and that grew on me enough to make me wish that I could call them home. I wished; so much so, I actually convinced myself a couple of times. There was something, though, that made the word “forever” get caught in my throat just before it reached my lips. I choked on “I love you” even more times than on forever. I have never uttered the words. Because I couldn’t find home in three words written in the sand.

“Handle with care” – a whole life summed up in one phrase. A whole life lived out of boxes, constantly in a temporary place, the only reality I truly wanted in dreams. A life with no real home.

I long to find a place to call home, somewhere I know I belong, somewhere I can just rest without having to be ready to leave again in a moment’s notice. I long for someone who will take the weight off my shoulders, without my having to ask. Someone who will understand that I don’t want help carrying it around –I’ve been doing it for so long that I am perfectly capable on my own– but unpacking, since I don’t know how to. Someone who will scold me for lugging it all from place to place, boxed up, for so long. Someone who will help me put the things of value away and throw all the rest out with the trash, to be forgotten in the morning — who will be able to tell the difference. Someone who knows that those boxes are just as much part of me as the hand they take into theirs and the eyes that look back at them. Two arms I can go to, naked, barefoot, with nothing hidden away in storage any longer, just me, as I am.

I’ve spent my whole life longing for a place where I belonged and that belonged to me; a place I could finally call home.
I found home the day I met you.
Because home is where the heart is.
So, please, “Handle with care”.