home is where the heart is.

it's good to be "home", albeit weird. my room is the same room i had in middle school - same desk, same bed, same crap stuffed into the nooks and crannies - with additional crap from my parents and recent years piled on top. this is a result of going to a boarding high school. i have no personal closet space and live out of my suitcase. but in the end, this is where the temperature lingers in the 70s during the winter, where i can jump in my car and drive 80 mph on the freeways, where i have access to peet's coffee&tea, sprinkles, le pain quotidien, urth cafe and toast, where fresh healthy california foods are aplenty, and where the best authentic asian foods i crave are cheap and better than you can find anywhere on the planet outside of asia itself. don't get me wrong, i've been home a little over twenty four hours and i'm already itching to get out, and yet a good part of me is enjoying basking in southern california goodness.

but to get back to the word "home": i could really either say "i have no home" or "i have three homes: philly, chicago, LA." but there is really no place that i feel completely at ease.

philadelphia is simply where i go to school, not a city in which i would truly want to live, but also the only city in which i have my own personal space. many of my closest social ties are there, but they are also in the city for school and over the next couple years will migrate across the country and the globe.

my parents house in arcadia is where i have lived since i was seven, and where i will probably live for a few months after i graduate, but every inch of my being wants nothing more than to get the fuck out of here after about a week. i love the LA area and am relatively familiar with those parts which are important to me, but social ties here are wanting - another result of going to a boarding school and not keeping in touch with anyone from before high school.

chicago is currently fantastic middle ground, or rather, a neutral playing field - a place where i have no obligations, a city that i love with the man that i love - but it is still so newly unfamiliar both socially and geographically that i feel like a constant guest/tourist.

having lived in what-to-call-home limbo for nearly seven years, i can't decide whether i am aching to be able to definitively call someplace "home", or if i am scared shitless of it.