Where is home?

I've lived in this house for over a year but I don't think of it as home. Maybe because it's in a different area of El Paso than where I grew up. I live in the Northeast but I used to live on the Westside. To be completely honest, I never really liked the Northeast much. And now, due to circumstances beyond my control, I live here. It's not so bad. This is a fine house. Nice neighborhood, great view of the mountains. But when I drive home from work now I don't think of it the same way I used to when I was coming home to the other house, where I was just so happy to be going home, to that neighborhood I knew I so well, to that sense of comfort and familiarity, you know? I live here, but it doesn't feel like home.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and for a second I think I'm back sleeping in my bed in the old house, the one I lived in from age 5 to 17. I remember the ugly flower pattern of the bedspread and how the moonlight used to come in through the oleander bushes outside my bedroom window. I remember waking up sometimes when I heard my parents talking late at night. I haven't lived there for seven years but for moments in the middle of the night my subconscious mind thinks I'm still there.

And I suppose I still think of that house as home. Home even though I don't live there and will never live there again. The house has been sold, painted white on the outside from the original red, remodeled on the inside. Another family lives there. My own family is all grown up and scattered. There's no going back, obviously. The house I knew exists mostly in my mind at this point. But maybe your childhood home will always be the one "home" you come back to. When you're young your house is your whole world, and the streets and the neighborhood and the house itself become ingrained in you in a way that doesn't happen when you're older. It was 12 years of this and this and this happening, the happy memories, the sad ones, the fights, the lazy weekend afternoons, meals shared, holidays spent, here's where I used to ride my bike, here's the backyard I used to play in, here's where I skinned my knee. So many individual moments with that setting as the background for it. Maybe that's why my subconscious mind always returns there. I grew up there and I can't imagine feeling the same way about any other place.