Question

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

Home is an unconditional sense of belonging. It is the place you go when you are having the happiest and the saddest times. It is the place you go to hide from your fears and solve your problems. When you’ve accomplished your dreams, it is the first place you go to celebrate and when you have fallen on hard times it is the first place you go to for support. Home is where you are completely and utterly yourself without fear of being judged. Where you show love not through material items but through spending time and personal gestures. Home to me is not a place, home to me is a feeling. It is a feeling you only get when you have completely surrendered yourself to another person, whether that be family, friends, coworkers, classmates etc. Home is being able to share all of your thoughts and dreams, no matter how unrealistic, and the person you tell stands beside you and cheers you on the whole way.

Personally, I have two homes. I have a home in Cochrane, AB where my family and lifelong friends live and a home in Kelowna, BC where I have spent 4 years creating a safe haven for myself. I moved to Kelowna alone in 2012, leaving all of my friends, family and sense of home behind. I moved to Kelowna without ever being here before and without knowing anyone at all. Throughout the past 4 years, I have made many friends, joined many groups, and never quite felt the same sense of home as I did in Cochrane, until September 2015 when I started the last year of my 4 year BA at UBCO. Over the past few months, I have created a home for myself. I have found a group of friends that have become my family and I theirs. We take care of each other just like a family does. We bicker and make-up, celebrate the successes and are there for the losses. We have family dinners, game nights and lazy days. I have found a sense of home here within the people I feel comfortable enough to entrust with my time, love, secrets, and successes.

Until I found this sense of belonging I had always thought I would be moving back to Cochrane when my degree was over. I missed the feeling of home every single day and it was really hard for me to be alone for a while. Whenever times got tough here I wouldn’t call my friends that live here, I would call my friends back in Cochrane. I found myself going back to Cochrane a lot whenever I got stressed out about school or just genuinely missed the feeling of people that genuinely cared for me. However, when I went home for a month at Christmas I began missing Kelowna. I got homesick for a place that I did not realize had become my home. When I got back after Christmas and reunited with all of my friends I was overcome with a sense of family and realized that I no longer needed to be in Cochrane to feel at home. This is when Kelowna became my home and I truly realized that home is not a place for me, home is a feeling.