Home is where the heart is

And mine remains in tatters

THE FOR SALE SIGNS I PUT UP AFTER LOLLIPOP WAS KILLED

After I have my next MRI scan in June I have to go to Romania. Go to my house in Valea, confront the ghosts, and sell the house. Issue is: I don’t know where I want to live. Even if I were to take cancer out of the equation (thinking of needing to be in close proximity of decent health care providers and not doctors who stitch me up without anesthesia while screaming at me in Hungarian) I have no clue. I know how I want to live, just not where.

Years ago, I attended the Arthur Findlay College in Stansted. This is the home of the spiritualist movement and where psychic mediums are trained. Magical moments aside (I did feel as if I had accidentally wandered into Hogwarths), what stuck with me most was the quote with which I was sent off back into the world. I was handed a scrappy bit of paper. On it was scribbled:

I am home wherever I am.

I have been cursed ever since.

At the time I was a tripod with one leg in the Netherlands, one in Romania and one in the UK. Then too, I had a hard time choosing which one should be home. It’s a topic I have addressed until we all saw blue in the face (it is getting boring even for me), yet it was never truly and properly tackled, let alone resolved.

It is starting to feel like an itch that won’t stop itching no matter how much scratching and calamine lotion are dedicated to it. I sit down with pen and paper, I make a digital mind map, I make dealbreakers, minimal conditions and maximum dreams check lists, I have even created mood boards on Pinterest. Once I find the place, the interior design and garden plan are ready and good to go. But where oh where do I go from here? Should I just get a globe from the second hand shop, spin it, and throw a dart at it? Grrr…..

STUFF AND THINGS

I don’t just need a sense of home, belonging and preferably a bit of community spirit. When I asked a friend what makes her feel she belongs she said pets and stuff. Same. I have pets that need space. And I have belongings that need housing somewhere. Anywhere!

Where do I put my stuff? Do I get rid of all of it or minimize it to fit into a small storage unit for the time being? Most of my things have never even made it out of storage since I left Tarnaveni in my second year in Romania. Some of my things never made it from the shipping container at my first house to the second house.

I once lost all my belongings in a house fire. Then many belongings in a burglary. I don’t want to force myself to “loose” things again. I want a home where everything gets its place. In a bookshelf wardrobe cupboard. Stacks against the wall, on the porch, in the shed, and on the bedside table (not under the bed though, because that’s bad energy flow…besides it’s where the monsters go).

The unopened boxes and lack of destination are at the core of what feels is “lacking” in my life, or what I consider is “wrong” with me, or maybe of not a fault or flaw, at least a failing. Memory, identity, loss, transition, a search for home, and the emotional weight of objects are a theme recurring way too often.

The outcome of the MRI has nothing to do with my next steps, the same way cancer had nothing to do with why I left Valea in the first place. I love assigning meaning to timing and the way certain events align, but I am giving this a rest. As a purely practical matter: I have to sell the house - I have to put my stuff somewhere - I have to live somewhere. And because the timeline of those three events is incredibly blurry, I just keep staring into the fog. And the only things that loom a little larger and a little clearer than a possible new destination, plus their practical and financial resolution, are the ghosts.

A friend suggested grabbing only the essentials and walking away to never look back. Not even a casual glancing. “Nothing is worth losing your sanity (or health) over.”

He is right. Stuff should not own us, lock us in, stagnate us or imprison us. Look at Marie Kondo, look at Feng Shui. Those energy matters make sense for a reason. But voluntarily letting go of almost all of it, does not make me feel lighter. It does not unburden me. It tightens my stomach into a knot.

Two things:

1. I envisioned my belongings already in a liveable space for so long. It is how I feather my nest, and it’s time. My time. My turn.

2. I have lost so much through force: once in a house fire and then in a burglary. Fuck me if I am going to impose that on myself now.

It feels cruel to even contemplate abandoning what is left. It does not feel right, at all.

I have already experienced the forced letting go, the kind where grief and theft did the sorting for me. And squeezed the joke out of me: The part of the advanced course in Buddhist detachment regarding material possessions has now been concluded…

But this is different. I don’t want to lose things again, not like that. Because it won’t be a free will choice; it will be because I am surrendering to the false belief that I don’t belong anywhere and will never have a home.

What does it mean to have a home for things? The comfort of objects having their place, not out of clutter, but out of care. Care for me. It is about safety, and nurturing. I want to create a little world for myself. A hospitable and generous place too, where others can come and feel embraced.

This limbo I am in, a storage unit, minimalist purge, wait for a new home to find me: it is almost a metaphor for what my body is going through again. I once made a beautiful series of art works called “Grow Roots & Bloom” and it is what I love.

What happens when you want rootedness, but don’t know where to plant?

MY TEMPORARY KITCHENETTE NOOK IN VALEA

I won’t force myself to lose again. Maybe home isn’t one fixed point, but a kind of arrangement where everything and everyone has a rightful place. Including me.

I love my house in Valea. The thick stone walls, the Hobbit height doors from the living room to the kitchen. When I close my eyes, I can picture it instantly: what it can look like, once fully renovated. I even get a little excited at the images it conjures up. Why can’t I live there?

There’s a deep tiredness in me when I think of that house. It’s not anger or nostalgia or longing. Just weariness. The kind of fatigue that comes from carrying too much, for too long. The kind that sinks into your bones and turns blood into sluggish syrup. It’s time to let go. But then, as I begin to imagine the actual steps of doing so, my mind goes blank.

The books, the clothes, the green tiles for the bathroom that have been moved around, unused, too often so a good few have cracked. The wooden spoons in the kitchen drawer, the long white lammy winter coat I kept “just in case,” the lamp with the crack in its base that still works, still glows warm.

And it’s not just that house. It’s also the stuff that’s here, wherever here is now. I don’t know where I want to live next. I don’t know what country will be mine again, or how long for. And when you don’t know where you’ll be, you don’t know what fits, do you. You don’t know what stays, or what goes. Do I put my belongings in boxes and pay a monthly fee for the promise of later? What if later becomes too late, what if later gets cancelled.

This question hits differently for me, because I’ve already lost everything. Twice. And yes, I rebuilt. I replaced. I thrifted my way back into a wardrobe, a kitchen, a desk. But the fear stuck around, quietly: that everything is temporary, including my own existence.

So no, I don’t want to force myself to “lose” things again. Not by trying to be overly minimalist or ruthlessly efficient. Not by pretending my possessions don’t carry weight. Sometimes I think we talk too much about “decluttering” and not enough about “housing.” Not in the real-estate sense. But in the roof over your head, queen of my castle and a place for things sense. I want to snuggle up on my lazy chair, with my crocheted blanket, my cat on my lap, reading my books, sitting next to my wood burner in my own home. So there. That’s what I love.

A small drawer that holds handwritten letters. A basket for the single socks. The niche where the clumsy coffee mug always goes. These are not just frivolous details, pics on my pinterest board. They are, sometimes, the definition of peace.

But I also know the other side of this. The burden of dragging too much from place to place. Lugging suitcases full of old papers you never reread. Kitchen gadgets that seemed essential once and now just live at the bottom of a box. How does one end up with three blenders, two steam irons and two hoovers? You start to feel like a snail. Carry your life on your back. Except you’ve outgrown your shell, and still can’t put it down.

What I love is different. I love a life that feels settled. Not static, or stagnant, but settled enough that so that everything can softly land. A life where my belongings aren’t a burden or a museum. They’re just there. Used. Cared for. Known. It is not an adoring or honouring of stuff. It is the honouring of me.

I love to make choices out of kindness, not fear. I love to decide what to keep based not on anxiety or scarcity, but on care. I love a life where nothing is forced into loss. A life where if I let go of something, it’s because I chose to, not because life took it first.

When I asked my friend and neighbour Eva to clean out my freezer, she video called me in tears. Not because the task was too much, but because it was done. She stood in my kitchen, holding the phone, crying, telling me she hated being in my house when I’m not there.

She hates me not being there full stop.

But the truth is that I can’t imagine living there again. I just can’t.