The day I got approved for my first apartment in St. Paul was the first time I felt a place ring out to me and say home.
I moved in with my then partner and two roommates, and learned to love the sunny light that would pour into my bedroom every morning. For an entire year, my partner and slept on a full sized mattress on the floor. We crowded our tiny lives into this small room. I never kept it clean.
The roommates moved out, and a cat moved in, and we spread out into the house. Filling rooms with books, buying a new couch, finding beautiful mid-century pieces, and sometimes art pieces that worked for the both of us, I would go home happy to this place.
For a long time I thought I was going home to a place, but I have found out it wasn’t the address, it was the person.
I was going home to someone’s heart. The most important place I belonged to for awhile was in the bright brown eyes of my then love.
Since the end of the relationship, my heart has felt like it’s been floating. There is nothing wrong with making your heart a home in someone else. What is hard is learning to go home to yourself.
I think in a conversation about our separation, my partner said that our relationship was like a house that we built together, and that we weren’t going to tear the whole thing down, but instead build new rooms and new places. Some doors will be closed off, some places will be remade, and that is work we will do in time.
But right now I am sweeping out the spaces in me that have long collected dust, the garden I let overgrow and let untended.
I am committing to making me a place I go home to.