Coming home...again...

At a certain moment in one's personal history, home as a concept is a paradox. That moment for me is now.

It is odd to be welcomed back "home" to a place that has never been my home. Not in the way most dream, smell, reminisce about whatever place that bore them. The land whose ground supports the foundation of their parents house. A town or city that echoes with the sounds of the childhood they had no choice but to leave behind. A home is usually filled with lifes' firsts or a place to return to for holidays and anniversaries. A one of a kind locale at the center of connective tissue that stretches to sounds, scents and stories.

The more liberal of the twin cities was never that kind of home for me. It was a place to grow up in a completely different way. To discover myself and create a life around that Lauren. That is why I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this place and more than anything the people.

Upon my return to Minneapolis, the place that both cultivated and corrupted me, I was welcomed with open arms. The word "home" embraced me with the outstretched appendages of a long lost love. It trickled off the tongues of friends and my second family. Always prefaced by "welcome" and "it is so good to have you back". Practical strangers seemed genuinely happy to see me. To be welcomed was expected. It was the welcomed "home" that threw me. It slid from people's mouths so easily that it was hard not to believe. In fact, I was almost convinced. Yet, somewhere in the ethereal place where personal memories and instinctive pride come together to create the connection you have to "home", I was awakened. There was a knee jerk reaction and that knee went straight to my gut. This was unexpected. I've never felt all that close to the small town in which I grew up, but something like betrayal filled my insides. Like somehow I had replaced my actual place of birth with something all together different. It was odd. It was like a different side of me was trying to make itself known. Some deep seeded attachment to a place I left easily and have yet to return permanently flashed before my eyes and then was gone.

Once I came back to reality I had to admit I made a home in Minneapolis during college and grad school but it was fabricated. It wasn't authentic and I mean that in the most positive way. I created it out of a need to feel completely myself in a place with people that accepted that person. Here I found people that made that transition seamless for me. The majority of my adult life was spent on the corners of 1st avenue between 4th and 6th street so it's definitely familiar.

But is it home?

Have I've always felt closer or more connected to a place where no family resides, no former playground stands, no historical deep rooted emotional connection exists? And if I do, does that make me messed up? Is that disrespecting my elders or upbringing? Is it turning my back on my roots?

I am glad to be back walking the streets that gave me a chance to get to know me better. The dark corners and bright lights that gave me the confidence to leave the place I call home as well as this place. When I left for Chicago four years ago I didn't know that I'd return. It wasn't clandestine. At least, not in my brain. But alas, I am back. Surrounded by 10,000 lakes and hundreds of thousands of memories. Talking to voices that my ears haven't heard in the flesh for years. Turning corners that almost seem familial but no longer resemble the picture in my mind's eye. Filling my days with doing things in Minneapolis for the first time again.

Home is a paradox when you return to a place that was never really your home.

Especially when you realize through its archetypes and architecture the world moved on without you but is still happy to have you back.