MY HEART BELONGS IN MANY PLACES

This is genuinely something I've been wanting to write about for two years, I've thought about it in the shower and during classes. I've thought about it walking around uni and sitting at home listening to my family chatting. The core of it, the truth is that my heart has been split. It used to be just one, growing up I'd never known anything other than home. My lovely parents moved into our home just a few weeks before me and my twin brother were born and so that house, that village was all I knew and all I could claim as home. They'd planned on moving away from that house at some point, but 21 years later and it's still home.

I'm really grateful for the base that I was given growing up, it was a huge comfort to me to have a constant home, a place that existed and was there for us no matter what. But in 2017 I made the big decision to move away and go to University. It scared me so much, the idea of living somewhere that wasn't home. I was stubborn and pretended that I didn't care, I was the coolest of cucumbers on moving day. Right up until I saw my mums little car drive away, I waved and smiled then ran upstairs to my room, locked the door and cried. That was it, home wasn't mine anymore. It was driving away.

And from that first time I went back after being at uni, things were just different. Things were half familiar and half completely new. Everything felt less lived in, there was less of me there now. Less of my smell, less of my mess, much less of my character. I'd packed it all up and taken it somewhere else. And I knew this was going to happen, I knew moving away would be strange and I'd be making a home somewhere else and so coming back would be difficult. But I never anticipated the grand emotional toll that this takes on your mind and your body. No one ever tells you about this side of moving away and going to university. I suppose it isn't a major selling point, there's no money to be made in telling teenagers how hard it is. And even though I wish someone had properly warned me, I don't think anyone could have prepared me for that feeling.

The way I see it it's as if the moment I left home I broke off a chunk of my heart and left it there. So when I arrived at uni, I felt lighter. I felt like part of me wasn't there and I had left it behind. And each time I come and go these fragments break and create more of themselves. In first year of uni, you're living on campus and it feels much more like you're just on a weird residential trip and it's very much a semi-permanent home. You know that you're just placing your belongings into a clean, white, neat room and you'll leave here soon. But in second year, I've moved into a home. An actual place, a building with history and character and I've decorated and made it comfortable and warm and a place I want to come back to after every day. So I'm more aware now, I've been made more aware that the more I feel at home anywhere that isn't home, the more my heart breaks into more pieces. As I'm able to build a home elsewhere, I venture further away from the home I always had.

I know that maybe doesn't make sense. But no one ever warns you that you'll be not only living between two places, but that your heart will be too. And it has to constantly adjust to always not being somewhere. When I'm here at uni, my heart misses being at home. And when I'm at home, my heart longs for uni again. Maybe I'm being dramatic, it wouldn't be the first time I'm sure. But it is a lot to emotionally have to adjust to. And not only that but the friends that you've grown up with, the ones that were all centred and grounded in the same place as you for so long. They've all gone and dispersed around the world as well. And so that shattered heart of yours, it also belongs in different people that you love, it's constantly being tugged and pulled from one place or person to another.

It's not all bad though, it can be a joy. We're in that stage of life that people miss and wish they could go back to. The freedom and independence. And I feel guilty for making this such a sad post because I wouldn't change a thing, living away from home has taught me so much about myself and the world and I really do love it. I just long for the stability and the consistency of living in one place, I miss the way that felt before I moved away. And if anything, I just want to draw attention to the fact that this is an emotional upheaval I never predicted happening. It's something that I but also so many people I know have experienced and it's completely normal to feel a bit lost and confused. Understand those emotions and let them happen. But appreciate the stage of your life that you're in right now, that's what I'm trying to do. Just make peace with wherever your heart is residing at the moment.

Thanks!

Molly

xx

my poem- glass bottle/

I began as a bottle made of glass, solid and unbroken but fragile

And the more time I spent away, the more I shattered

A piece breaking here and there and forever walking away

From the whole I once was.

A shattered pile of glass is no longer a bottle, it has no function or

No purpose and even though I still recognise myself as this bottle

I see what I want to see.

I’m leaving shards of myself down every road and in every county

Maybe one day they'll piece me back together again

Until then I will be pieces and parts just looking for a home.