When I was 20 years old and studying abroad in Vienna, I traveled with my friends to Turkey for spring break (not the most quintessential spring break vacation, but in addition to history, culture, food, and hiking, it was full of plenty of beaches and beers). Naturally, we often found ourselves talking about home. Meaning Vienna.
“When we get home, we have to find somewhere that sells börek!” Vienna was our most recent home, our shared home, and it was only natural to call it that.
But things got confusing when talking about our homes in America. “At home– I mean, Maine…” I would clarify, before launching into a story about the small peninsula I grew up on.
Much has been said and written about how English is lacking words for love. Any middle-schooler knows the substantive difference between “liking” someone and “like-liking” someone, because this is what we English speakers resort to at a young age.
“Do you like him, or do you like-like him?” was a question often posted by gossipy 6th graders. People in love (or in like-like) for time immemorial have been creating their own words for affection, because English doesn’t do justice to the range of our feelings.
The same problem, if not the same solution, exists with “home.” “Where are you from?” or even, “Where do you call home?” have become increasingly challenging questions to answer over the years, because there’s not one right answer for me.
Is home where my heart is? My feet? My bank account?
Skipping over my heart for a moment, both my feet and my bank account are currently in a small town in Colorado that I’ve only spent about three weeks in. I’ll vote here, and it’s the address on my new driver’s license. But is it home if it was chosen by default and I don’t plan to be here long term? My bank account will stay, but my feet will soon be in Spain.
Is my home Penobscot, Maine, where I’ve spent most of my life so far? Maybe, as the 10+ years in that small, coastal town shaped me considerably, but I have no practical ties there since my parents moved away last year.
Boston was fun, but I don’t think I ever considered it home. I always felt like I could never quite figure Boston out. It was one of the more challenging places I’ve lived in; nothing came as easily as it has in any other city I’ve lived in, from grocery shopping, to eating out with friends, to what to do on the weekend. Everything required slightly more effort than it seemed like it should, and nothing naturally fell in to place.
Where else? Vienna? It’s been six years since I lived there, and I’m still in love with Vienna. But it’s an idealistic type of love; Vienna is a fairytale, not my home. Vienna, Liberec, and Dublin will always be important to me: places where I spent significant time and had incredible experiences, but not necessarily an integral part of my present or future.
Where do I have friends, memories, experiences, familiarity, and the absolute sense of surety that I’ll continue to return, again and again, feeling like I’m coming home each time I do? Where do I know that, even if I’m not there all the time, I could go back at any time and pick up the threads of a wonderful life?
Taipei. The only place that I continue to return to and actively keep up with the news. I still have friends there that I talk to regularly, and I know that it would be very easy and emotionally satisfying to move back there at any time and pick up that life again. Taipei is my metric for every new city (cost of living? night life? food? public transportation? proximity to beaches?) because it excels in almost every category I can think of. True, it could be closer to the beach, but a 30 minute bus ride is not bad.
I’d always assumed that “home” would be in America, even if “current location” was abroad. But of course that’s not a requirement; while I’ll always return to the States to see friends and family, the biggest hub in my life right now is still in Taiwan.
Until English invents at least six new variations for “home,” I may say that my home is Manacor, or Paonia, or even still Maine, depending on what I’m talking about. But in the truer sense, for now at least, my heart is in Taiwan, even if my feet and my bank account are elsewhere.
Going Out Your Door 
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