Where or what is home? Or is it who?, 08.04.2011

It is a question that is spinning in my head ever since I took the decision to stay.

I never used to have difficulties in finding my way through unknown places and getting lost was only a matter of having enough fuel in the tank of my car. I would always find my way back home.

Home was always easy for me. It could be anywhere. I was home at my „ex-in-laws-to-be“ and I was home at my parents’ apartment for soooo long. I definitely was home in my lovely, very-first own nest in Vienna. During holidays I would even call the hotel my home. „Let’s go home“, I would say to my travel-companion, and I would mean „Let’s go back to the hotel“. So I am wondering. Now. That I am leaving Vienna. Was I really home everywhere or did I just (ab)use the word in an inflationary way? Because I knew that there is MY home always waiting for me?

I will pack up my stuff in boxes during my Easter vacation in Vienna. Vacation is anyway an euphemism in this case - it will be a „working vacation“, as I will go to work as well. Packing belongings, memories will come back. I hope they won’t knock me down and make me change my mind. Because my mind is set to „leaving Vienna for a different experience, a different way of life, forming a new life and making new friends“. Maybe „the known“ is what makes my home feel home – maybe I have used the term „home“ as equivalent for „comfort-zone“. Stepping out of the comfort-zone is leaving home.

Here in Dubai I sometimes feel out of place, disconnected from the rest of the world. The only connection to my „old life“ is work – and, how creepy is that: facebook. I am reminded by facebook to wish my friends happy birthday, I find out that some relationship-statuses have changed, I see the postings, but is it really reality? And how much of their feelings are people really sharing on facebook? I’d rather die than to post anything on facebook that is too private, negative or work-related.

Work. A good therapy to keep your mind busy. I have probably spent 12-14 hours a day at work during the last week - a place so familiar in so many different ways. To keep up with all tasks and responsibilities that keep pouring down like hard rain, but also to stop me from thinking, because after long hours you just take a shower and fall into bed. But that’s not the perfect escape either. I tend to be a thinker. I am thinking too much. Maybe I am even feeling too much - too much for a city like Dubai. You gotta be a tough cookie, to survive alone in Dubai without serious damage to your soul, but that’s a whole different story!

So: home. I think it is not about the place itself, or the people - even though I love my people at home, don't get me wrong! I know from experience that I can feel home anywhere. Anywhere I feel happy. Anywhere I am not a total misfit to society. That’s the reason I would assume I could also make Dubai my home. And I take the challenge. And I ask – I plead – everybody to accept my decision and to support me to their best! Because it’s hard enough to step out of comfort-zone, out of home.