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I was watching a movie the other night. I think it was Garden State…but Im not totally sure. Anyway, the guy in the movie said something like “do you remember the precise moment in time when your parent’s house became your parent’s house and not your home.” It really made me think of when that moment should have arrived for me.

I was never at home in my parents house ever. When I was a small kid my mom took me to my aunt and uncles house a lot and I would kick and scream when I had to go “home”. I hated “home”. After my parents divorce, I lived with my grandmother for a while and her house became home to me…but we moved to 2 different houses before we finally moved 9 million miles away (in my mind) to a frickin junk yard house in the crappiest place on earth. Thankfully, we didn’t live there long. I think I would have died if we had lived there any longer. I made it through the year and a half or so that we were there. We moved back closer to my home town….lived in a couple of places near Jackson, then I moved in with my aunt and uncle.

I wanted my aunt and uncle’s house to be my home, but it wasn’t. I slept on a couch in an enclosed porch on the side of their house. I was treated like a visitor by my cousins…one that they didn’t like so much a lot of the time. So, instead of staying there much, I would come in at 2 or 3 in the morning, get up at 5 and ride around until time to go to school. Basically, no one had to see me. That irritated my aunt and uncle a bit (which I suppose it should have), but I didn’t want to feel like I was intruding….and I was made to feel like I was. I lived there all through high school. But, during that time we were close to my grandparents house and I felt like that was my home. I would take the clothes that I liked over there so my cousin’s friends wouldn’t steal them….I would take anything I didn’t want stolen over there, in fact.

I roamed after high school….I lived in the dorm at my college, an apartment with a friend, an apartment with another friend, Conroe, TX, and finally I moved to CA to be with Linda. We moved back to Biloxi, MS, then back to my college town, then to a duplex on the outside of town and then we bought a house. That house was the first place that has ever really been home to me. I was there alittle over a year until I decided that I needed to “figure things out on my own” and I moved out.

My house now is my home. My grandparent’s house is my second home….my “home home”. Really, I think that because I hated my home so much when I was little, I have stayed away from where I’ve lived most of the time…I guess because I was used to doing that. I’m just now able to just chill out at my house without a major need to get out and do something else. I mean, I like to go do stuff, but its not a need.

Do you guys remember an exact time when your parents house wasn’t your home anymore?