Home is where the Heart is

Author Note: Dear Reader. I’d like you to read my essay and get comfortable with my words. I want you to place yourself in the text and feel my words.

Dear Someone,

This is not easy for me, an immigrant turned American, to write. Consider this a one-sided and inconsequential letter of a young, lost girl’s words. What is the true definition of home? Can another environment ever replace home? You’re probably wondering why I wrote this. Here’s why. My country, Iran is what I call home sweet home, or at least used to. I couldn’t see myself referring to America as my home. Home is home, and everything else is not-home. That’s the way the world is constructed. The pain I experienced at a young age took a huge toll on me and the person that I am today.

Do you know how it feels to feel lost within yourself? You’ll get used to waking up every day to the new scene that you swear could never get old. You’ll meet new kids, people who are completely different from the ones who lived in your old neighborhood. Nobody will judge you nor criticize you and the most they’d do is stare but who cares? you’d already be used to it. You’ll be so stuck in your current fairytale, so deep into the illusion, that you’d believe that this is the best decision your parents have made in all your years of living. Then days would go by, the trees would start to shed leaves, the news would talk about the rise in killings, the streets would be emptier and so is the hole in your heart because you realized that the change your parents made meant you had to leave behind the family that mattered most to you and you believe so much that you were progressing and growing because you no longer had to sleep with the fear of waking up to bad news, that your cousin didn’t make it back or your papa was brutally murdered in his home and now you’re scared. You’re all alone when you realized that the whole entire world is crazy and rather separating yourself from the people who could protect you the most, you needed to be there with them. Do you know how it feels? Home is the only illusion that makes sense, not the country that you thought moving to would diminish the fear in your heart.

In our defense, we were never looking for a new home, rather a new beginning. We never had intentions of America being our new home, at least not me. Iran would always be home to me. Wasn’t that the true definition of home? Not where you’re from, but where you are wanted. Home is the only place where your fears and doubts are cast aside but my home is fragmented, and although we all know it’s true, I’ll still lose the argument. Even if the evolutionary path of knowledge and wisdom is presented in my evidence. So I will hold my silence and create my own will to survive. And the divide will occur and I’ll still be the outsider.

Definition of home? Home could be a townhouse or it could be a small fire and the light it cast on a few familiar faces. Definition of home? Be it ever so humble, it is more than just a place. But whatever home is… its a way of organizing space in our minds. The reality is, home is where you make it and You will inevitably return to your original home at the end of such a journey.