This piece is a contribution to the STSC Symposium, a monthly set-theme collaboration between STSC writers. The topic for this upcoming issue is Home.
He felt never home at home.
He couldn’t grasp it but there was no ease ever. Rarely did he dare to invite friends to his place, even less often did he enjoy being there. Most other times, he’d miss no chance to leave the house that was no home.
In other houses he could feel some of his tension relieve. Years later he could still remember the smell of his best friend’s house, which was the place where he could relax the most and savor existence, getting intimations of what a home is supposed to be.
Nature also sometimes got him there. But the pain in his joints that dominated his mind stopped him from embracing it fully. At least part of him could let go with having a harmonic vastness in sight, sounds not of humans but the pure flow of life in his ears. There was no one to judge him, nothing to conform to in posture or deed. Nothing except freedom.
Those joints in his back started hurting at too young an age. Some say a bent spine is a sign for a person trying too hard to conform, bending themselves into a shape they are not. He didn’t believe that no matter how true he sensed it to be.
But no pain ever cut as deep as realizing this longing which was likely never going to get quenched.
His soul was longing for something, he just didn’t know what. Turns out, you can miss what you never had.
He felt he wanted it, just not what it was. It was obvious to him that he lacked something but not how to attain it.
The simple enjoyment of an evening on the couch with his wife. Evaded him. The happiness of entering his house after a long day of work. Evaded him. How beautiful it was what he had. He didn’t even dare to grasp it.
Growing up, he didn’t lack food or shelter. Hygiene or healthcare. There was plenty of education and entertainment. His base necessities were satisfied, or weren’t they?
One tiny little detail was missing. An unimportant aspect of living. Merely something immaterial. Love.
The nurturing nature of love is not provided by supplying the essentials for survival.
It entails seeing a person for what he is, which he never experienced.
Most of his friends were dullards. But they were pure. He didn’t care for their shortcomings, just as they cared neither for theirs nor for his. That was as close to unconditional love between humans as it ever got and will ever get for him.
Nobody knew about the oblivion that was his soul. He wanted nobody to know. Caring for others came to him easily. He wanted everyone to lose such pain as that which his identity grew around. But he didn’t dare to show anyone his utmost core. That made him only comfortable alone.
When it came time to create his own home, he started to realize how much he used to miss out on. The physical pain was long gone. The psychic remained. What also remained was the inability to reconstruct, what he could neither imagine existing nor ever fully felt.
They say home is where the heart is. Or is home what’s in the heart?
But then what if it’s empty, because it has never been filled?
There might be no happy end to this. Just maybe.
Only once his heart has grown,
for his kin and for his own,
he may someday build a home.
Whoa, that last bit about an empty heart was a gut punch. Well done! Enjoyed this piece. My own anecdotal psychological investigations of those around me has shown that those of us raised with unconditional love really are separate/different from those who were raised with conditional love, but it never occurred to me to investigate those who felt no love.