home. it's a weird concept to me, having moved away from the home i grew up in, permanently, in august. i may not stay where i'm living now but i'm sure never going back to the small town of my childhood in rural southern new jersey. and yet, whenever i go to visit my family, i say i'm going "home", even though i haven't felt truly at home in that house, where i lived from the time i was a few months old, since i went to college at 18. i left and my room became my sister's room, and when i visited i got to stay in the office/guest room. add that to the fact that brooklyn feels increasingly more like home every day, and home is just not really very homey.
today it grew even less so. my mom and stepdad are getting a divorce, and my mom's embarking on a new phase of her life with a new job in a new state (hello, pennsylvania!) and as of today, a new condo. now, without my mom living in the house i grew up in, it's really not home at all. moving my mom out of that house was pretty surreal. i'll definitely still visit, as my sister and stepdad are staying there, but it seems quite empty now.
even though i've moved away and settled into a new place quite happily, my life still hinged on that axis of "home". i still knew i could always go back to the house i grew up in and see my family and have that familiarity. now that all that's rearranged, i feel a little off-kilter. i guess this is growing up, living through the shifts and establishing a new axis away from that old notion of home.