Someone please show me where home is

I have been moving for the longest time that I am no longer sure

The foundation has been moving with me and we have been moving rigorously

So much that it has cracked and it is starting to fall apart

And I am tired of travelling far and wide with bags of rubble and the cracks of my base

For the sake of keeping my feelings of home together

I feel as if I am without a home

I haven’t been home in a long time

I haven’t had a home in a long time

I miss the feeling of a home, the feeling of home

In people more than infrastructure

The foundation has been moving with me and we have been moving rigorously

So much that it has cracked and it is falling apart

The walls are tumbling down with it

not all at once but the building blocks are separating from the cement

That once held them together

The pressure being too much that I can no longer keep them together

They keep falling with the more moves I make

I feel lost

Evicted from a wholeness I once knew, a ‘homeness’ I once knew

Exiled

I feel the loneliness no matter how long I can try and pretend that I am whole

I can travel far and wide with my bags and broken chunks of concrete

But I am choking off the dust of this feeling of not being home

And I cannot help but question why I am going through this spiritual grovel

All whilst carrying this rubble

It is apparent that I am without a home

I haven’t been home in a long time

I haven’t had a home in a long time

I miss the feeling of a home, the feeling of home

In people more than infrastructure

I cannot help but question the company I previously kept

That promised, said company, for a time longer than this

Here I was trying to make things easier for others but it seem even there it is not enough

We can laugh and smile, spend each others time

But really no one has room for strays

And I cannot help but to question,

Why I can not get a place to rest, not in family or friends?

I feel like a basket no one can carry, because no one has to carry

No one wants to carry

And so I have to carry myself and all that comes with me

Memories buried in dust, rubbles of broken relationships and a foundation,

The self, holding on for dear stability

My legs feel they can no longer push further, I need a rest in someplace

But on this road where no one is home and all the doors are locked

I have no choice

Just as I thought I would finally get to settle I found myself back on the road each time

Carrying the now tattered bits of my foundation

And still clenching onto them in hopes of keeping a part of me that seems like home

That still feels like it

The walls have tumbled down and the building blocks havebroken into pieces

Separating from the cement that once held them together

You see, I haven’t been home in a long time

I haven’t had a home in a long time

I miss the feeling of a home, the feeling of home

In people more than infrastructure and I am tired for goodness sake

I am tired of walking

I am tired of searching for home

In places

In people

I am tired of the self compromise that comes with accommodating other people

And yet there is no accommodation anywhere for me

Especially when I need it the most

So somebody please

Someone please show me where home is

I have been moving for the longest time that I am no longer sure

I am tired of travelling with my bags and whatever bits of concrete left

Because the foundation has been moving with me and we have been moving rigorously

It has now completely fallen apart

The walls have tumbled down losing the cement that once held them together

I had to abandon whatever of the building blocks that remained

The pressure was too much that I could no longer piece things together

Because they just kept breaking with the more moves I make

I have stretched as far as I can but it seems I can no longer move

I need assistance but it seems I just cannot find help

Or cannot be helped

Out of fear of disrupting another’s broken home

 

______________________________

Disambiguation Article:

I’ve moved house 9 times since I was 14 and its about to be the 10th

It sounds far fetched to some and familiar to others but its just the plain old nomadic truth. This shifting had me realize a few things or maybe lead me to ask a few questions; questions for my family and questions to myself but before I get into them here’s a little background.

I grew up in Alexandra Township in what was considered the “new houses” and in high school, I used to be embarrassed about being from the township even though we had already made our first move by the time I was in Grade 9. I went to a suburban school with “rich kids” whom I have since come to understand as upper middle class. There was already so much going on with me and my self esteem – or serious lack thereof – that I felt a deep pressure to fit in even when I wasn’t supposed to, so I suppressed that part of my life. I never denied being from Alexandra but seldom spoke about it

Settling into the new house didn’t last long and I was gutted about moving again. I was from the “boujee” part of the township but it was still the township so it was a little odd adjusting to the suburbs but less than a year into the place and we were moving out again.

The houses changed with the street names, with the area codes, with the distances to the main transport routes and further away shopping centres but 2 things remained; my wake up time was still 5h30 for school and I still went to the same school. It meant I was still going to wake up early and travel far, and I was still going to be picked up late and sit in traffic because I was traveling far, to a place called “home”. More new neighboursmeant more new strangers, more new places meant adjusting and adjusting some more. Friendships were established and most – if not all fizzled into meaningless conversations and empty promises to try and get together or spend the weekend or coming to visit.

With each move, it felt my life was getting emptier. Boxing up, packing away, losing valuable items, finding items of no value and tossing them, putting less important items in storage.. it started to feel like some sort of routine and everything I had come to understand about family and home was amongst those items, and as much as I did nothing and said nothing, those items just kept slipping away but I just became a little more melancholic.

No matter how I felt bout it, it was good for me and still is because it taught me different kinds of lessons but it has had an impact on how I view the world; with less naïveté and more caution but mostly it taught me to pay attention to everything around me – mostly out of fear of getting lost. I learned about people and who they can be. I learned about traveling late and the consequences that can have on a girl child – which is usually not in the girl’s complete control but that’s another story and I learned a deep detachment from people and in some instances said family

Its drawing nearer to the end of the year and we’ve moved twice as a family – I’ve stayed in a few places myself up to this point – and I still wonder why we keep moving?

I was always told it was to live a better life – getting out of the township, better surroundings and influences for me and my future and all the reasons you can think of to try and put a young lady at ease about the instability of “home”.

What could I have said though? We had moved quite a few times and it was starting to depress me but being a black child meant ask no questions and just accept that “we will be fine” or “this is the last time” and depression is a foreign language to the majority in the African community. So I carried my sadness along with my suitcases and packed my thrills, comforts and memories of home in some box, somewhere

This brings me to my questions:
Why do we keep moving and not settling?
Are we running and who are we running from?
Is there something we are chasing that we still not have acquired yet as a family and what exactly is that?

Being in my twenties and understanding the world a bit more, a part of me feels maybe I’m just part of another African family that thought “bigger is better” or “money means better” and I cannot blame them because my life turned out better, I had more opportunities but it didn’t always make me happy.

So my most important questions to my family would be if they are happy and if not, is the moving around the problem or the solution? Does fulfilment lie in a new house, a new area or is it in the idea of having made it out but never really settling anywhere?

I am drained. The process of packing and unpacking it all, losses and friendships that died before they could really begin, it felt as if life kept taking and taking from me and pushing me into the unknown all at the same time. And here I am, preparing for the next move. It has left me with a feeling of confusion about home and what that means, what it is. It has left me feeling indifferent about people, they come and they go. It has me a bit cynical about comfort in places and people because of disappointment.

It forced me to look deep and try to figure our who I am amidst all of the instability but more importantly, am I happy? What contributes to that happiness and what takes away from it, beyond moving houses but about my stability, comfort, trust, loyalty and security in people and in myself. These are questions I have been trying to answer all year and I still continue to try and answer them and hopefully this brings a clearer perspective about the reasons behind it all. This is the first of many stories I am trying to tell and hopefully I told it well enough.

I’ve moved house 9 times since I was 14 and its about to be the 10th. This home has been broken, the foundations cracked and the walls falling apart. Each part falling apart with my thrills, comforts and memories of home in some box, somewhere.