The Sacred Stillness.

Home is an abstract concept; a strange way our analytical, post-monkey brain compartmentalizes our feelings about the world and our place within it. I do have a house, but break it down into its basic components and it is just some organized building materials, even in the gold-tinted memories of my childhood. Its walls stand watch over me, and its sentimental value is real to me, but those who struggle to live with a mental illness know that those safe and watchful walls can turn into a cage in the blink of an eye.

Anxiety claws at me whenever it sees an opening, it whispers into my ear Fear… Fear… It steals the breath from my chest in an instant, and with its icy claws it grips my heart and squeezes, forcing it to beat faster and faster. It takes a herculean effort to force it back into the shadows, but each time I know it will return when I am vulnerable. I hate it. I hate it so much.

But when I think of Home, this intangible, metaphysical feeling, many different things come to mind which all have one constant; calm. Sitting in my computer chair with a purring cat on my lap, watching my mom smile as I share some of my writing with her, the sunlight streaming through a tree as its branches gently sway in the breeze, the smell of rain on the air beneath dark and burdened clouds. All of these bring happiness, sure, but for those of us who live our lives fighting against our own brains, the inverse of our very nature is infinitely more enjoyable than simple happiness.

In these moments there is a blessed emptiness. No worry, just sensations. Heat, cold, smell, touch, just… being. I wake up everyday knowing that there is an inexhaustible amount of things to worry about, but in these moments it melts away. It will return, undoubtedly, but before it does there is nothing, nothing but the sacred still of simple existence. Home to me is not a structure, it is not a feeling, it is not the arms of a loved one, it is stillness. The sacred stillness may last for days, or mere moments, but it is home. Home is wherever and whenever there is calm in my heart.