I miss the word home.

It’s been over a month since I graduated from TCU. Since that time, I’ve moved to Chicago with only one suitcase. I’ve been in Chicago for over two weeks now, working full time as an outside contractor as the Academy’s Leadership Director at Northlight Theatre in Skokie.

I sleep on a borrowed twin bed. My bedside table is plastic and borrowed from my Aunts. My desk is my roommate’s folding card table from our back porch. My lease is up in August, as well as my contracted job. I have no plans thereafter as of yet, although I am trying to find some.

I drink organic beer from Trader Joe’s called “Simpler times” on my back porch. My room is decorated with $5 maps from the bookstore next door. I’ve finished two books since I’ve been here already. A homeless man tried to kiss me the first day I was alone in the city. If I stand in the exact right place in my apartment, I can see the Sears tower out of my kitchen window.

I feel this is going to be the most interesting time in my life.



I asked a dear friend of mine what the meaning of home was to him. He first said it was where your stuff was. Well, most of my stuff is in Texas, I replied. He then said it was where you sleep. If that’s the case, I think I might have slept more at my Aunt’s house in the past few weeks of being in Chicago than in the apartment I’m renting.

When does a place become your home? When I studied abroad in London, I had to keep a journal of daily activities that my professors would read. My professor would wait for the day when we would call our flats our home. She would circle it in the journal and write “Ah HA. London is your home as of (whatever date it was.)” I remember mine being pretty early in the game.

My grandmother was moved from her home of decades in Connecticut to Texas with my family out of sheer necessity for health reasons. Her home is in boxes in my sister’s old room. Her home is repainted, refinished, and being bought. I wonder what it feels like to be tied to something like that. I wonder if I’ll ever let myself feel that. Maybe not.

I miss when the word home meant something. In the past week, I used the word home in reference to Fort Worth, to Bedford, to TCU, to my place in Chicago, and my Aunt’s place in Skokie.

I fear that I will never have a location that I can call home. Either of my own or in a generality. People will shift and move, and I will have no ties to the former places that I called home. I suppose that’s the terrifying part of this time. I have no ties. I only owe myself this time.





“But still I smile because I need to look strong.
And all the while I soldier along.
I wanna find me from where I’ve begun.
But I’m afraid to be who I am,
Who I want to become.”