A place called home.

The Last of the Pimlico House





A week ago today I left the Pimlico House. After a lot of processing and talking this out with close friends, talking to God about it and a lot of other ways of processing this, I am able to write this.

A place that I realized in the last few months not only was I grieving saying goodbye to those girls and the loss of those relationships, but as I was packing over the weekend I realized I was also grieving saying goodbye to that house, and all it represented for the last three years.

I have been processing and talking about it with friends since then, as I was surprised to feel an attachment to a physical place like that.

I had just gotten done packing up my room and was in the living room. I remember being completely exhausted and was sitting on the floor in the living room. I laid back and was staring at the ceiling.

Then was looking around at the walls, I loved the vibrant colors we had in the living room, the personality and how each little thing on the walls was a piece of all of us. All of a sudden it was as if all of these memories caught me at an unguarded moment and came rushing to the surface.

Tears were quick to follow.

The kind that make you question why you’re even crying because they come upon you so fast.

“this is the first place that was home.”

I realized more of why leaving was so hard for me.

Home is one of those things you stumble upon, something you have longed for and searched for most of your life, to have had it and yet to now be losing it, seemed unreal.

That’s what it is.

This was home for me.

At 25 years old, I had never experienced home or what it meant to feel safe. To have a refuge, a safe haven. A place where you are known and loved, until 3 years ago.

I realized the weight of all I was feeling. it was a loss of those relationships, but it was so much more.

It was losing that which I had searched for endlessly, wondering if it was even true, or even out there. It seemed to betray me. That home was that place I knew was out there and once I stumbled upon it, had to return it. it didn’t’ seem right, it didn’t seem fair.

Everything within me was at war.

I didn’t want to leave.

It was more than a place I lived in the last three years. It was the first place I have ever lived that felt like “home.” This imaginary four-letter-word I have read about for years, heard stories about, heard people talk about with feelings I have never associated with home.

And for the first time, I knew what it felt like to be home.

That day I wrote,

“This was the first place I felt safe. I remember moving in. I knew one of the three girls living there and was moving in with total strangers. Becky, one of those “strangers” came at once to greet me. She helped me move all my stuff in. I was moving all by myself. I couldn’t believe it.

I knew things were going to be different here that point forward.

I remember falling asleep that night feeling at home. A stranger, unfamiliar feeling that never left. Each night I feared it would go away. But it was here to stay….

This is the first place that felt like home. And now it seemed I had only found home to lose it…

Home is one of those strange things, I wonder if I will ever experience this again. Or was this for just a brief moment in time. Will I have this again someday, will I get to experience this with a husband and children, will I ever feel home anywhere again? Or was this just a dream.

This feeling seemed to betray me.”

This home was a place I felt most alive.
A place that was a gift. Just as the relationships and the amazing things the Lord did in each of our lives through that place and through each other and where we were each at in our stories, was also a gift.

I am blessed to have had that home. Blessed to have known those girls.

Blessed to have had a place I called...



Home.

“home is not where you first lived, but where you feel most alive.”