Home...
A place to cry
I love my windowsill. It's my favorite part of the room I rent in Allston. On it are pieces I leave behind with and without intention: orange peels; a thrifted mug with a papier mâché mushroom G made for me, plus a bone I found in the woods in Marlow; a ceramic ornament that says: SNOW TIME, and ramekin that says: Housing is a human right!) (both @gbarceloniceramics), which contains a single sprig of baby's breath; a few prints, pinned haphazardly up by the mug and ramekin's weight; a candy-colored ring a person “proposed” to me with; a couple bobby pins; plus a whole lot of candle wax from a whole bunch of candles. My bed sits right below the three windowsills of my room, so I naturally tend to wake up among orange peels, chunks of purple wax, and whatever critter has crawled in through the window screens. This little area, which I experience awake, unconscious, and those fuzzy states in between moments, has become a Home to me — at least one of them.
I've been preoccupied with Home, maybe always, perhaps because I’m a Cancer: How it’s defined, it’s allure, what it can provide and, in turn, what it can't. I've begun to keep a running list of a whole lot of things that feel like Home to me: my windowsill, dinners shared, the restaurant industry, to name a few. I’ve decided to informally study the idea of Home here, perhaps through June, aptly since I suspect this will be a queer undertaking, or beyond. I guess I'm seeking definitions, words to name this beautiful, sometimes fleeting, sometimes forever thing. I do not have points planned, only that list. My conclusions will be reached naturally through my writing here, so contradictions will naturally arise — please, point them out! I need peers to review.
(This feels aggressively sentimental, I'm aware. I'm moving soon, so that's probably why I'm preoccupied with such a sensy thing. So please, for me and just general betterment, suspend your mean irony and lean into sweet earnestness.)
Home: A place where one lives permanently, according to a silly Google search.
I think very few people resonate with this definition, especially in queer circles. Often Home is described as a feeling relative to a space (It doesn’t feel like home yet :/), but I've never thought about Home as purely that. I think it’s more so relative to a sense of connection and recognition, and therefore to a person or group of people or space. I think for a lot of young people, homes are experienced in quick succession; in a weekend (a visit home to dad), a week (a visit home to mum), and months and years (lease-sort of situations). We are tasked with sorting through, designating, cultivating, and then maintaining these makeshift homes (perhaps more appropriately labeled Nests) all over and for years, and then — for queer people — families to go in or with them. It’s an incredible undertaking expected by every person, a kind of default setting that deserves a gold medal.
G and I were having a conversation about a Home — as in the area we grew up, the mothers we grew up with, and the houses they live in now. We both noticed how easy we dissolve into tears in these spaces. And they aren't necessarily despairing tears. Most of the time they're happy, in response to a wealth of care and love our mothers share with us — we are lucky that they are extremely sweet in these short burst visits, reluctant to let the mood sour — which creates a great space for us to do anything with, chiefly emote. Yes, this feeling is likely tinted with a layer of remorse or guilt that shades our happy weeping, since we seldom access this specific space anymore, and we still tend to take out our bullshit on these women who love us the most.
And perhaps the tears are easier to access because we've cried so many times before in these spaces that are fixed with such mythic histories, that certain things or scenarios — a closed door, the voices outside of it, the sight of ourselves in the mirror opposite our bed hearing the voices outside our closed door — remind us of a time we cried, and we sink into a moment and subconsciously tap into a thing that triggers the release of a magnificent, emotional dam we've unconsciously built. Of course, I'm sure there are many different explanations for our easy tears.
Okay, so this leads me to the first part of my working definition, one ironically having to do with space: 1) You are able to cry, for better or for worse, because you are given the space to, by a love that is ineffably present.
I think what rings Home to me about my windowsill is the sense of connection I feel with myself when I’m below it. These beautiful things remind me of beautiful moments that I have experienced both alone and with people I love — I guess this all comes back to my love of things, explored in this episode of Stir. They make me feel safe and secure and a part of something familial, and thus they create a space in which I feel comfortable enough to dissolve into tears if I so wish — and that, I promise, I definitely do.
To be continued…
In another Stir issued.
Let me know how you feel…
About this whole ordeal.
In the little section down below…
Please let me know.
𓃹𓃹𓃹
LOL xxxxx
thanks for helping me feel like I really have a home so far away from where I was born, & for sharing your words!! I will always be a stan