Missing home

The end of the nomadic era

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

I’ve had these over-whelming feelings lately of something missing. Like a lung without the ability to breath, I feel a part of me isn’t quite complete. But, I hear myself cry in despair, you’ve had so much fulfilment lately, so many experiences, moments of wonder. How can there possibly be anything missing? How can there be this pang of emptiness, especially when I didn't quite believe that would be the case?

I wrote an article earlier in the year about what makes a home, a home. I described my dream home. I wrote that a home can be a person, a place, a feeling, that home can be anywhere and everywhere. I wrote about how the house we used to own no longer felt like a home, that it was more of a noose tethering me to a life which no longer served me. I’ve certainly enjoyed taking a break from the commitment and the ties and the endless pressure. But now more than ever I’m craving stability. I’m pining for a place I can call my own, a place my husband and I can call our own. A home where we can close the door on the outside world and just be.

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What makes a home, a home?

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Last month, in Morocco, when we had the realisation that we couldn’t stay any longer and we were looking into options as to where we could go, was when I first felt those feelings of longing for the home we no longer have. When I had food poisoning and we checked into the hotel, I wanted nothing more than my own comfortable familiar surroundings. I dreamt of our old bed, our previous sofa, the basket of blankets I used to pour over me. It was in those moments when I wished we had our own home to go back to. Not even the same house we owned. Just a home, our home. A place of safety, security, comfort. All of the things I’ve given up.

We all make choices. We live in a world, the majority of us anyway, where we can’t have it all. And of course it’s human nature to want what we don’t have. My husband and I have been nomads since April 2022. I don’t miss that particular house we left behind. We bought a house that was made for a family in a suburb where you can send your children to a decent school. It wasn’t for us but I don’t regret any of it. Since then, we’ve travelled Europe where in between van life and living out of a roof tent, we’ve frequented many Air BnB’s and various hotel rooms. Living out of a bag, our only possessions travelling along with us. You get used to living in other peoples homes, some of which are more comfortable than others. I’m currently writing this from a beautiful cottage situated on the west coast of Ireland, with views of the Atlantic out of the window. I realise how lucky I am and, for the most part, I’ve enjoyed living this nomadic lifestyle. But it doesn’t come without sacrifice. I’m feeling now the frayed edges of that sacrifice, the desire strong within me to patch up those edges and for me to stay comfortably within the confines of them.

When I wrote before about home being anywhere, I still believe that to be true. I feel at home with my husband. I’m starting for the first time to feel at home within myself. There are places over the years which have felt like home, even special places on our travels where we felt we could create a home. The current craving I have is for the physical, for the bricks and the mortar, for a space to fill with my favourite things, nice things full of intention and joy. I don’t want extravagance or grandiose. I don’t want another noose. I want a balance between the life we once had and the life we are currently living. I want something small, simple. Something mine.