{"id":36,"date":"2014-02-03T23:31:14","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T06:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/?p=36"},"modified":"2014-02-05T00:38:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T07:38:00","slug":"a-house-is-not-a-home-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/2014\/02\/03\/a-house-is-not-a-home-right\/","title":{"rendered":"A house is not a home, right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Home<\/a>. How to describe it…?<\/p>\n

It’s certainly the building. But not just the structure because that’s the house. Let’s think of it as a container<\/strong>. Yes. It is a container of people and objects and memories. But there are lots of these containers, more specifically the home is a container of what is comfortable<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Home to me is a literal and figurative space. Literally, I live there, (sometimes) sleep. Figuratively, I am at rest there. It’s not a home if I cannot fall asleep, and not only sleep but feel rested. I hadn’t considered the feeling of home and how the word is bound to notions of dwelling-space and emotional space until I moved<\/strong>. When the topic of moving arises, most people consider the literal complications<\/a>, such as the time it takes to pack and how big a truck you need.<\/p>\n

Moving. A tricky problem to confront when considering the house\/home. For me, I literally moved around the corner. Same neighborhood, same friends, same family contained in the dwelling. But for some reason I couldn’t attain a restful sleep. For weeks I would lay in the same bed with the same furnishings around me (though arranged differently) unable to grapple with the fact that it is the space I was supposed to occupy<\/strong>. When I was awake I thought the new house was great. Twice as big as the old one, and newer. A real-life real estate reality show come true. But I would still drive to the old house (it hauntingly hadn’t sold, and wouldn’t for 8 months) and walk around the now empty space. Sometimes I would cry. It was so bizarre and irrational because I had gotten what I had wanted out of my family’s new house and literally nothing had changed except the space<\/strong>. I still feel compelled to drive past that old house periodically. We moved out 4 years ago.<\/p>\n

The first stab I made at separating from my family was last year. I had been prolonging the first college move-out for three years waiting for someone I could move with. I was terrified then of the prospect of a craigslist roommate<\/a> or living alone, and I remain thus today. I chose a close friend and everyone said we would hate each other after a month. We didn’t (small sense of victory there) and I was relieved with my choice to surround myself with a person I felt comfortable enough to share my space with. I was even a little glad to be rid of the shackles of sheltered, parented life. But the home <\/strong>was the problem. When I visited my family’s house, I would stay all day, and drag it out until the next day… or two. But why! I had my own house with my best friend and no rules about dinner. I realized that I had finally settled<\/strong> myself into that awkward moved-into house I spoke about and that now instead of visiting my old house, I would visit my hauntingly vacant old bedroom. Over time, I eventually settled myself into the roommate house.<\/p>\n

When I moved back into my family home (yup, that eventually was a failed experiment) I had to repeat my house\/home anxiety<\/strong>. So, I must deduce that for me, the concept of the house as dwelling and home as emotional safety are inextricably intertwined. I dread moving<\/strong>. Not because of the physical boxing of objects (I perversely enjoy the organizing\/reorganizing) but because of the unavoidable and exhausting nostalgia that is sure to overwhelm.<\/p>\n

Home to me is the physical place and the mental space of comfort. It is as much a construct for feelings of joy, rest, belonging, safety, and nostalgia as it is for feelings of sadness, uneasiness, alienation, fear, and eeriness. I know that I will have to move my home throughout life and that I will eventually settle in each time. I also know now that I am only able to appreciate the positive values in connection to a physical place because of the negative counterparts each place can also represent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Home. How to describe it…? It’s certainly the building. But not just the structure because that’s the house. Let’s think of it as a container. Yes. It is a container of people and objects and memories. But there are lots of these containers, more specifically the home is a container of what is comfortable. Home to me is a literal and figurative space. Literally, I live there, (sometimes) sleep. Figuratively, I am at rest there. It’s not a home if I cannot fall asleep, and not only sleep but feel…read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22705,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[921920],"tags":[265,1467],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assignment-2-1","tag-home","tag-story","et-no-image","et-bg-layout-dark","et-white-bg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22705"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/44"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/jbernoe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}