Home is a feeling

Home isn’t a place; it’s a feeling.”

I’ve heard that line countless times. The famous quote is

all over the Internet. It’s a line from “Love, Rosie,” the famous 2014 movie that starred Sam Claflin and Lily Collins.

When I was younger, I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that “home” is not a place. I can still remember thinking to myself, “And they say it’s a feeling? How could it be a feeling? It certainly isn’t a feeling.”

This was what I had always known: A home was a concrete building made of bricks stacked one on top of the other. At home, there were wooden cupboards of holiday cups and plates, dusty shelves of books and other trinkets, boxes of pictures and mementos passed on across generations, dusty flower vases, blankets that reeked of mothballs, wooden floors that led to the bedrooms and the smell of fresh caimito from the big tree outside.

As I grew up, that image of home started changing. And I didn’t even know what it should look like anymore. Home is supposed to be a place of comfort and happiness—the real kind. Home is supposed to be a safe place for the silliest thoughts and darkest secrets. It’s a refuge for the weary soul. It’s where you can strip off the mask you use to hide from the judging eyes of people.

But there came a time when my home didn’t feel like “home” anymore, when coming home didn’t feel like tucking under the covers of a cozy bed, but being stuck in a cold woodshed. There came a time when I was at home but longed for someplace else, because wherever that was, it just felt more like “home.” And that was when it hit me: Home isn’t a place. It’s a feeling.

I realized that being “home” doesn’t necessarily mean being home in the literal sense of the word (Heck, sometimes, people call their place “home” only because there’s no other way to put it). You can be miles away from that place and still be home. Being home can mean rereading your favorite childhood book, watching a movie you saw as a kid, hearing a song you used to jam to with your friends at slumber parties when you were 14, playing a familiar tune on the piano, reuniting with your loved ones after years of not seeing each other, feeling the warmth of the campfire on a cold night, being in a van with your friends for hours on a road trip, burying yourself in a warm embrace or a big bear hug, feeling the cool wind blowing in your face as you roll the windows down on a car ride going to God knows where, listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, or just sitting on the grass in silence beside the love of your life while holding that person’s hand.

Home isn’t a place, you see. It’s a feeling.

Patricia Rivera, 19, is a communication graduate from Holy Angel University. She is currently hunting for her first job.