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An angel asked me a question about the greatest gift I received from my parents, and made the assumption that the most obvious answer might be “love.” I’ve decided that it was another gift entirely, one that I completely took for granted and spit in the face of towards the end of my teenage years. One that is having a profound impact on my psyche at this time. The greatest gift that my parents provided was a solid and lasting ideal of what a home is supposed to be.

Home. There are a million clichés regarding this concept, each sharing one thing: they all capture a piece of the whole.

Home. It’s a place that one assumes will always be there waiting, unchanged, unaffected by the rigors, trials and difficulties of life. It is more than a place, though it certainly has a foundation in reality. It is also the point at which one hangs all ones hopes. The closet into which one shoves ones fears. It is the physical respite from which one builds their castles in the sky, molds their dreams into reality, fights their battles against the world at large. It is a collection of likeminded individuals working together towards some common goals. It is a base from which individual goals are possible, perhaps even reinforced through the support of other individuals working on different and just as personal goals. It’s the safe house, the place where you expect at worst to be left to your machinations and at best to be assisted in them even if in spirit alone.

Home. For many, it involves a place where you may watch your children grow, learn, laugh, love, fail, succeed, rebel and conform. It is the place where your children know they can return to get a reassuring word or hug or to learn some intangible fact of life through either their own experience or through lessons taught and told. It’s safe, secure. It’s not confined to a single building, but the building is a large part of what makes it what it is, what gives it flavor and personality. The rules of engagement within are well understood even if some are never stated out loud or put down in writing. The personalities within are familiar, comfortable and comforting no matter whether they agree with you or not, and perhaps it is the simple fact that even when they don’t agree with you they still support you that makes the largest impact.

Home. It moves from city to city, state to state with you. As long as all the pieces are together, the location in which they reside is not relevant. If there are enough parts there to make a whole, if there is enough love and support there to maintain yourself, it is home.

Home.

I’ve recently come to the realization that I don’t have a home anymore. I don’t have a place to go to receive the support and love and nurturing that sustained me for the greater part of my adult life. I know of plenty of buildings into which I will be welcomed. I know of plenty of arms just waiting to extend to me in a hug. I know of plenty of people who I am related to who support and respect me, even if they have a less than imperfect understanding of who and what I am, of who and what I have become over the course of the last decade or so.

Is it wrong of me to think that this is not enough? Is it wrong to be dissatisfied with what I have available because I compare it to what is lost? Do I wrong the people who are waiting and wanting to help by thinking that perhaps what they have to offer is not as good as what I had before, not as complete, not as rewarding? Am I really so ungrateful? I suppose I am.

Home. What will it be in the future? I imagine it to be half of what it should be, what it could have been. I imagine it to have many voids in it, a vacuum into which all of the goals that I had, all of the plans that I made, all of the things that I thought mattered have been consigned to their demise. I will not try to fill this void, it would be pointless. I will have to wait and see and try to heal enough of myself to begin anew. To rebuild at a different location that does not include the doubts that make this void possible. To reinvent myself as I know myself to be, not as the person who my soon to be ex-wife has painted me in order to ameliorate her own conscience.

I sit out here in my CHU, waiting on them to turn on the hygiene water so that I might bathe again, waiting on something to change. Waiting on day to turn to night and again into day, for the days to pass until I can come back to the states. I realize that I cannot say “until I come home” as I do not currently have one. I don’t have a place to store my few physical possessions, I do not have a place into which I need to put all the STUFF that I gave up in order to make the ex and the kids comfortable. 10 years worth of STUFF, appliances, furniture, clothing. My true concern lies in that if I don’t have a place into which I may put STUFF, then I also don’t have a place to bring my children to where they can feel any of the things that I did when I was young. The ex has already promised Seth that he will have two of everything, now that daddy doesn’t live with him anymore. He will have two houses, two toothbrushes and beds and sets of toys and clothes. I have no idea when I will be able to make good on this promise. I have no idea why she felt compelled to make it except that perhaps she didn’t care about the pressure it puts on me since she is keeping everything that Seth is currently used to having.

Home. That ideal which was so solid for me for so long has disappeared. The buildings in which I built my concept and from which I built my sky castles are gone. The environment I was always so happy to come back to at the end of a long day or week, the patter of small feet and high pitched voices crying “Daddy! Daddy!” when I came through the door, no matter the time of day. All of this is gone. Not changed, but gone.

Home. I know what it should be. I know what it can be. I even know what it will be. But I have no idea when it might be so again.