The following is some Gonzo shit from 3 am, written with less than full brain power and editing capabilities. What that means is that after writing something, and staring at it for maybe 10 seconds it is done, written and can not be unwritten. Admittedly it's not quite journalism, more of a personal note on something fairly near and dear to me, and in all likelihood all of you. I'm not sure why I feel obliged to post this, but sometimes you follow what you feel moved to do, by some external, or more likely internal force.
And then there’s home. Think of all the places you ever called home at one point or another, houses you lived in for a day or a month or a year, it doesn’t really matter how long, it only matters how you felt. I lived in a country house until I was about 3, but I don’t really remember it, a flash here, a dash of memory there but it wasn’t quite home. 414 SW Woodlawn was home, it was the place I grew up and figured I’d live until college, but it wasn’t as things so often aren’t. I remember the number, 2345196, because I considered it, and still do my home, even though it isn’t any more.
Even if I still lay claim to the city as home, because of friends or people who are better referred to as family, that house is no longer my own, it is someone else’s. I saw a car, not mine, not my family’s, not anyone I knew parked in the driveway. Even so, I still call it my house, and it will never cease to be home for me, no matter how many years pass and what else changes, a home is forever. The heart of the matter is the place that feels right. I’ve lived in New Zealand for the past 5 years or so, and I’ve met some great people, I’ve met people who I love dearly, who I will be very sad to leave and who I will stay in contact with for many years to come, but this is not home.
Part of it is the transitional phase between childhood and adulthood, which just so happened to happen as I moved house and more importantly home, and I felt abandoned by the things I once knew in this strange new place. Another part is subconsciously I tie it to my father’s death, no matter how bat shit insane that may be, because we need something to blame, even if it makes no difference. I could have called it home, could have accepted it as my new place of being, of belonging, but forever I haven’t.
People complained about my apparent lack of love for the new country, hell I complained about it, I wanted to love it, I should have loved it, I do love it. But it is not home, and in every part of my being I know this. I’ve walked around and admired all the country offers, all the city offers, all the great friends that I have here to experience it with, the near family I’ve made and the people who I would die for, but no matter which way I look at it America is home. I feel sad that this is the case but sometimes there is nothing to change, nothing to accept or to think about because in the gut, or the heart, or any other organ of importance you know something is right.
I know that life would be easier here, I’ve become so fucking accustomed to life here that changing it will mean changing everything, but I’m already doing that by going off to college alone so it’s not really that much of a change is it? Moving thousands of miles away from home, I wrote from home there but that is not right, from the house where my parent, singular, lives would be more accurate, but we simply things for ease of use. We call hotels home if we stay for more than a day, ask if we can go home as kids when we mean something very different to that safe place where we live, or don’t live in my case.
It is different though, different from all the others who move around the country, because they’re not seeking home. They’re seeking education, a place to stay, a job, something to keep life going at the current pace, they will make a new home but it’s close enough that nothing changes, there is the need for normality. Something I don’t have. Mom doesn’t understand what is meant by home. She still thinks of 414 as home, probably still thinks of where she grew up as home, still thinks of America as home.
It is all just so fucked up about moving, why do we do it, and why don’t we do it. I don’t understand, I don’t understand life and death either, but I don’t question them because there is nothing to question, it just is. Maybe it’s that way with home, you can beg and cry and complain and it will never be right because home is somewhere else. Home is where the heart is is bullshit, home is the place you have made to be your home, not anywhere else. You don’t have to have been there, hell you don’t even have to know the place exists, you just have to know the feeling.
I don’t know how growing up in a screwed up family works, if you don’t consider it home, if you don’t consider the orphanage home, if you don’t consider an adopted parent’s house as your home, but I know that I lived in a nuclear family, and I considered where I lived home, and where I want to live as home. I lived in a typical American family, mom, dad, 2.3 kids, 2 dogs, it was all normal. My dad was kind of old but otherwise it was fine, typical. Then we moved to New Zealand, what the fuck. It doesn’t make any more sense to me than it did the first day I heard about it.
Half-way across the fucking world, why? I don’t know, and now when I say I’m going to college people ask are your parents going with you? Well fuck you I don’t have parents anymore, I have a mom and sister, a singular unit, and no, no they are not. Why do they assume, I don’t know, do they assume that we all are one unit? A family sticks together no matter what? I don’t want to be here, sometimes all I wish, with all my heart at any one time is to be in the states, to be with friends or family or something, it doesn’t matter I just want to be home. I don’t know where that is right now, but I know it is not here.
A few days ago I stood marvelling at New Zealand and all its wonder, at all the great things I could do here, at all the great people here, and I caught myself thinking about staying, then I thought about it some more and could not fathom it. I never could have, I also couldn’t have fathomed my parent’s mortality, so that really doesn’t have any effect on what comes to pass. People die all the time, but we don’t acknowledge or care because of the monkey-sphere. Maybe I don’t care about New Zealand because my monkey-sphere was back in the states, that was where I cared, and still do care.
I should care, I should give a fuck about what happens here, my sister and mom will in all likelihood be living here for at least another 4 years and probably many after, but I don’t know if I can come back, I just don’t acre about the politics here, or the economy, or any of the bullshit that I should care about. I don’t know if I’ll want to come back. In all likelihood I’ll want to see the people, but the idea of going back to New Zealand when I’ve settled in to a new home is well, difficult to grasp.
I will never understand some things, a great many things actually, but in all the infinite wisdom that I can espouse upon myself and others the thing I will never understand is why, why we moved, why here, why to any number of things. Because it couldn’t have just been the job, it couldn’t just be anything because every decision has ratifications, especially one like this. Everything changed, one way or another.
I don’t want to cry about fair and unfair because it doesn’t get anywhere. Life is what it is, and despite the fact that I have spent hours upon hours wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t move here, or if I had gone off to college one year earlier, if my dad was still alive. I wonder these things but they will never come to past, and like the Mirror of Erised it leads to nothing but madness. Wishing for what will and never can come to be, and wondering about things that are simply ineffable, it simply doesn’t help anyone, least of all me.
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