How I Came to Be Home-Free

What does “home” mean anyway?

I’m about to buy another plane ticket. Leave another city. Return “home”. I think a lot about that place: home. What is it? Where is it? What does it mean? Do I choose it or does it choose me?

I’ve spent a lot of my life living in one place and yearning to be in another. I’ve spent a lot of my travels looking for the perfect place to stay. I’m going and not coming back, is a phrase I’ve said more times than I can count. I always come back.

Where are you from? they ask.

Vancouver, I respond.

Oh, so you grew up there?

No.

High school?

No. Well, one year of middle school. But, otherwise, no.

Oh.

It’s been my chosen home. The city I’ve spent the most time in. The place I’ve cried the most, loved the most, fucked up the most, made my art the most. But is it home?

What is home?

When I first “gave up” having a fixed address seven months ago, I started spreading the news… Did you hear? I’m going to be homeless! It didn’t like how it sounded in my mouth — too crass, not encompassing of the fact that it was a choice — but it seemed to be the only fitting description. I was, indeed, going to be without a home.

You see, a new dilemma arose as I approached thirty. I’d been living in a shoebox-sized room for nearly a year, in…