Home Isn't Always a Place, Sometimes It's People Who Make a Place Home

Home. 

We spend years and years believing home is a place, that it's the house where we spent most of childhood, that it's the iHop you frequented after a long night at your job or after a muggy night spent at the mini golf course, but that's not home. 

Home is the people. 

It's the person you stayed in the same booth at ihop till 3am where you laughed so hard your head spun and your stomach was in knots, it's gently peeling off the masks and healing wounds as your waffles grow cold. 

Home is the love shared in the worst moments. 

It's sitting at a funeral, not being able to catch your breath and knowing your makeup is ruined; it's glancing around the room filled with heartbreak and catching your best friend sobbing brokenly and rushing to her side, all your pain forgotten because someone needs all the love they can receive in that moment. 

Home is the memories of a house you once lived in. 

It's driving up to that old house and not recognizing it because it's not the same place you carry in your memories. It's remembering the big oak table in the dining room that was always overcrowded with people, food being passed around and loud voices filling the entire house with stories and rambunctious laughter. 

Home is your very first car, the one that broke down because you hadn't learned how to care for anything besides yourself. 

It's the tears that were spilled as you sped away from a restaurant you used to love, but now is the final crime scene in a heart shattering story. It's the loud jam sessions as you drove aimlessly through the dusk filled streets. It's your shaking hands being held as you sit in the parking lot outside of the old baseball park while you finally rip the band aids off the infected wounds around your heart. 

Home is that little booth inside the cafe you frequented with an old friend. 

It's the laughter you shared and the dirty looks from the elderly woman across the way because your joy was to loud for their sensitive ears. It's the sharing of the craziness of life between two young girls with old souls. It's the truth being shared over desert and the hand squeeze of reassurance saying I am here and you are not alone, love. 

Home isn't always a place, sometimes it's people who make a place home. 

Home. 

It's such a simple word, but it's oh-so complicated because home could be anywhere. I tell strangers I miss my home sometimes and they ask me where it is, then they give me an odd look as I begin to describe people and tell stories. 

I've been told that I can find a home anywhere I go, but that's not true. 

I can find a house, I can find people, but I can't find another home because I know exactly where my home is. 

You see most people call their childhood house, home; yet for me that's just a place, a place with memories, good and bad ones, but it's not home. 

I say that everyone has a home, but there a few lucky ones who find their homes in people and I just happened to be one of those people. 

So when I say I want to go home, I don't mean to a house or even to my childhood home. 

No, I want to go back to my people. 

I want to go back to laughing so hard, I'm crying. 

I want crazy jam sessions as we drive around aimlessly until we end up at a totally random place. 

I want to hold or have shaking hands held as we talk about things that terrify us while we heal infected wounds around our hearts. 

I want to give or receive reassuring hand squeezes while we let the tears flow while we tell things that everyone else has brushed aside. 

I want hugs so tight that you can feel the other person's heartbeat. 

I want to share inside jokes with one look. 

I want to enjoying talking and not worrying about lapses in silence until we realize we're the last ones in the restaurant because they're closing. 

I just really want to go home now.