In this past while, I have found myself in an awkward position when referring to the place where my permanent address is. It is where I regularly lived for five years until I left for university. It is where my family still lives. However, for the year or two preceding my leaving for university it had distinctly ceased to have that feeling which most people call "home". Instead I felt something like a visitor or a stranger in what was my home.
I am presently living in a flat with a few room-mates, and nothing of this strange city carries a sense of home about it, either. And so when I think about going back to BC, I am stuck as to how I should refer to it. Am I going back home? It really is not my home, per se. But then, it is also the closest thing I have to a physical location that might be called home. It is more than my parents' home, but it is not entirely my home, either, nor could I ever settle in their home again.
So this begs the question of what is the nature of "home"? Are there any inherent qualities which determine what makes a given place home? Or do the properties of home depend on things independent of location?
I know that when I am with certain people, the sense of home is stronger than without those people no matter where we are or what we are doing. However, being with those same people in one place versus another does affect how uniform that sense of home is.
This means that home must be comprised of both those around one and where one presently is with those people. Which leaves me to wonder what that means for my sense of "returning home" to the place that is home no more.
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