You Can Always Go Home Again

‘Musings’ – where I share personal essays, poems, and short stories.

Home for me is the Turks and Caicos Islands. Whenever I need to hit the reset button, thoughts of a trip home are always at the forefront of my mind. Though I don’t get to go nearly as much as I would like, I try to visit at least twice a year. The dream has always been to spend half of the year there and the other half in different parts of the world. I haven’t gotten to that point in my life yet, but I’ll always work on it.

Being home is always an overwhelmingly complicated feeling. It calms me and helps to cancel out the noise. It also fascinates me. It reminds me of all I am blessed with and this beautiful country I am able to call home.

However, it also reminds me how easy it is to lose yourself if you’re not careful; how easy it is to get trapped in the beauty, the quiet and relative peace – until you find yourself worrying about nothing else. I’ll be the first to admit that when I force my mind blank, which I often do when home, it’s easy to get distracted and obsessive about that same quiet that worries me.

Home always nourishes me and then threatens to cut off all of my oxygen; stifling me to the point where I cannot breathe.

It holds me close and makes me empty promises while pulling me away from everything else.

Home is the ultimate comfort zone while serving as my biggest critic. It often times wraps me up in both love and isolation in the scariest of ways.

It’s the balm to the aching heart, the breeze on a hot summer’s day; the dose of cold water that is guaranteed to wake you up.

It’s the hope that blooms bright while somehow managing to be the fear that chokes me.

It’s not always the homecoming I once dreamed of, but it’s always everything I need.

It’s everything.

It’s nothing.

It’s the place I can never leave nor forget.

I need to know that I can constantly walk away from comfort, push myself past my perceived limits, and work past the current overwhelming of what having all of these grandiose dreams will give you. I need to know that stagnant is a state of mind and being home lets me know all of these things. I can walk away and come back when I need to, and I can be even more than I am right now.

It’s my sanctuary, my muse, my answers to the questions that I’m afraid to voice aloud, and the faucet that fills the drain. Most of all, like my last trip, so beautifully reminded me, no matter what happens whenever I need to and even when I don’t, I can always go home again.

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Natalya

Natalya is an Account Manager by day and an editor and author's assistant to passionate creatives by night. When she is not adding to her enormous book collection or stationery supply, she is catching up on her favorite television shows.

Natalya is the author of All The Things I Never Said, a soul-stirring collection of short stories, prose and love letters for the soulful wanderers, the brokenhearted and the hopeless romantics.

You can follow her rantings and occasional sparks of brilliance on Twitter @NatalyaMuncuff.