But why can’t you have more then one ‘home’ – who says home has to be one place or one person or one country?

Give me friends or give me death – give me friends and I’ll show you home. Maybe thats the key – belonging everywhere and no where at the same time?

But I can’t agree with home depending on people. There are explicit words for that: friends, family, community… I wouldn’t restrict home to these terms. How many friends do you have to have? How integrated do you have to be in a community? … in order to call a place a home – does that mean some people have more of a home than others? … and that some can even be homeless? If that is so – I would argue against the importance of having a home.

For me, home was where my unsure future lay. Thats also how I defined “having lived somewhere”: I’ve lived somewhere if I stayed there, and didn’t have a concrete idea about if I was going somewhere after.

Sleeping at a hotel, doesn’t make it your home, if you know you will be going somewhere(back home) afterwards. But I’ve lived in an apartment for only a month, and it was my home, because I thought I was going to stay there for years to come – even though it didn’t turn out to be so.
If you constantly move to places, where you definitely know, you will leave again… then I guess you don’t have a home, unless you think of a place that you want to go back to as your home(in that case you’re on an extended trip).
What also might happen, is that you move to a place, and stay so long, that you decide not to return to where you came from; in that moment, when you decide to stay there, it becomes your home, even if you’ve already lived there quite some time.

I’ve also been homeless – according to my definition. I’ve lived in places where I knew I wouldn’t stay, and was also aware, that I would not be returning to my previous home. I didn’t like that time, but luckily it lasted only 2 yrs. During that time, I wasn’t sure of where I wanted my home to be, so I managed to accept my homelessness, rather than choose a home too rashly.

I have a home now, and who knows, I might stay here for a very long time. I’ll definitely move out when I marry(which I hopefully will), as this apartment would be too small for a family. But thank god, that lies so far in the future(I’m 20) that I don’t think much about it – thus not disturbing my feelings of home in any way. But as to studying in another place and finding a job… of course, it is not likely(regarding my past) that I will stay here long enough for my wife to lure me out of my home, but the possibility does exist(that I finish studying and find a job that suits me in the same city), and I’m willing to take the chance inorder to call this place my home… and if I do move “prematurely”(again) I will have no trouble making a new home for me somewhere else – alas, I should have enough practice by now : )

My mom says that “home is where your stuff is,” which I guess would be true, but I feel like “home” is where the people who you love/love you are. I’m kind of struggling with the same issue of “home” at the moment too…