Home Is A Feeling Not A Place

I dream about my childhood home several times a week, every week without fail.

I left home at 18 and ventured out into the great big world with something to prove. At the time, I wasn't quite sure what I was proving, maybe just that I could leave home.

In the decades that followed I lived in many places. Upstate New York, London, Boston and Los Angeles were all places that I referred to as "home" for a time. I had many apartments, jobs and experiences.

I met many people. I had many cool experiences. I made many decisions, a lot of them poor.

I guess I achieved what I initially thought I set out to prove, that I could "do it." I could survive on my own. I didn't need anyone or anything. I didn't need ties, commitments, obligations or a safe place to fall. I was an island, not a peninsula, dammit.

I was able to do this for a long time, until I no longer could.

I had never really learned how to take care of myself. I had never learned that being independent doesn't just mean being alone, it means being alone and thriving.

I neglected my mind, my body and my spirit for years. In fact, I didn't even know that my spirit was a "thing."

It caught up to me, as things tend to do, when you're not paying attention.

It started about a half decade ago in Los Angeles at the pinnacle of my career, as I was working as a Rock Radio DJ in the number two market in the country. I had arrived!

I did "it!!!”

Didn't I????

A slowly growing discomfort morphed into a pretty steady feeling of dread and eventually turned into a consistent state of fear.

For months my heart was racing. I was no longer alone, panic was my constant companion.

I couldn't sleep or eat. My body was running on pure adrenaline, caffeine, alcohol and nicotine.

Eventually I was diagnosed with an Autoimmune Disease. While doctors said that the disease was the physical "cause" of my symptoms, I realized that in actuality, the disease was the result of years of neglect.

Although I had left home to find myself, I wound up abandoning myself before every truly finding me.

I cried constantly. I was in tremendous emotional and physical pain. I felt crazy. In my desperation I alienated most of the people in my proximity.

I didn't alienate the people who stood by me in spirit, though. My family, my symbol of home remained steadfast. Those I fled from at age 18, still held on. They didn't understand what was going on, but they refused to let go.

They had all relocated from the family home that I had left so many years ago and were living in Florida. My Mom and Dad, my older brother and his wife.

My older brother had always looked out for me in the way big brothers look out for their younger sisters. Concerned, supportive, loving and stern depending on what the situation needed.

And so it was my brother who said to me during one of many long late night phone calls, in which I alternated between anger and sadness, fear and desperation....

"Melissa, it's time."

It's time to come home he meant. In that moment, I realized that the home he referred to was not a place (that place was long gone), but a family. A family that would love and care for me as I could no longer love and care for myself.

And I did. I came home.

I packed up and left. I left Los Angeles, I left my career, I left my friends, and most of all I left all that I had set out to prove.

A funny thing happened over the next year. I started finding The Me that had been lost. The Me that I had never met. The Me that I had set out to find so many years before, had been there all along. I just hadn't known how to access her.

For years I added layer upon layer of trying to become something or someone, only to realize that was too heavy a weight to carry. I began stripping away the layers and found a new liberation, not by running away from people, but my connecting to people and connecting to myself.

A year and a half later, my brother died suddenly.

He was there, and then he was gone. There was no preparation, there were no goodbyes.

The sadness and shock was and is breathtaking.

There is an empty space in my heart now. Yet oddly, my heart is probably the fullest it has ever been. I thank him for that. He gave me the permission I needed all along to become myself.

I dream about my childhood home several times a week, every week without fail.

The thing is you never really leave home and it never really leaves you. I know that now, and I am thankful.