HOME

My alias is freespirto. I made it up as an inner joke because once I helped somebody realize she’s a free spirit. I am not, not yet, but I am smart enough to understand it.  In real life I am a PhD candidate in Weimar, a small town of 60.000 in central Germany. I’ve written a lot about Weimar since I moved here 1,5 years ago because it didn’t just change my life but also my perspective about life… and people. Normally I would write a post to celebrate these changes, to share with whoever is reading how do “you know you’ve been in Weimar for 18 months”. I could call Weimar “home” because I have some precious friends here and some precious friends around the world connected to it. But lately I am confused about the word “home”. I was always saying that “home” is wherever there are people we love. My hometown is in all senses “home” but I can foresee a day in the future when all my friends are gone. And most certainly this city will be less “home” to me in the sense that it will be less welcoming, less inviting, in the end, less “mine”. Weimar will much sooner stop feeling like home, if not already, for the same reason. It feels like the place where everybody is having a great time for a while only to leave for other destinations, stronger, wiser, and happier. And soon enough Weimar becomes the place of painful goodbyes if you are the one staying. And soon enough, as people are moving from place to place, country to country (even continent to continent) I'll find myself having people I loved in many different corners of the world. Most certainly I can’t call “home” every place I have a beloved friend. In fact I think I can’t call “home” any place at all because “home” is not a place after all. “Home" is the people you have around when you are somewhere it feels like home. It’s a smell, a wish, some laughs, a dream, a hug, some tears, a smile, excitement, a full moon, a bottle of wine, an early morning walk, the truth. I could go to Italy or Belgium, to some places in Greece, to Netherlands or USA, to some different places in Germany, to Cyprus. But that’s where others have chosen to be. Soon I will have to make my own choice, find a reason (or more) to seek home somewhere in the world. I will probably end up some place else but it’s a necessary process, an inner quest with no right or wrong choices. After all I can still call home the place I was born in… my mum would be really hurt otherwise!