Home

"Oh, so you're going back home!"

I've heard this a lot lately. We're moving back to Ontario, yes. And I guess if the province that issued your birth certificate is home, then yes, I am moving back there.

I'm moving to a place I've never really been. It's a place I've driven through a couple of times on my way somewhere else. Our time there could be a short as 12 months. It does not feel like I am going home.

The last two times I visited the town I was born and raised, it didn't feel like home either. I haven't lived there at all in 13 years. I haven't lived close to it in almost 10. Just because I will be close enough to visit more regularly doesn't make it feel any more like home.

I rarely refer to my parent's house as "home", even though they still live in the house they brought me home from the hospital to. I haven't lived there in almost 25 years. I've been gone a decade more than the total amount of time that I live there, just about. It's not just not home.

I don't think we'll stay where we are going for much longer than 18 months unless there's an amazing offer for Joe at the end of his schooling. So I don't think it will end up feeling like home either.

Vancouver used to feel like home, but only when I wasn't here. When I was visiting somewhere else, it was the place I wanted to get "home" to. But when I was here, it felt like the place I rented an apartment.

With every employer that never called us back, and with every interview that ended in rejection, it started to feel like the place that didn't want us.

With every report about real estate that we would never afford, lifestyle choices we didn't want, activities we weren't interested in, and neighbourhoods being gentrified into major label blandness, it became a place we didn't want to be.

But what I do know is that my home is with my love. It's not a building, or a city, or a country. It's with him. And given how we've made it through some amazing things, home is going to continue to be with him.