By Noah Henson
Anytime I’d hear a family member tell me “Home is where the heart is” I’d scoff or roll my eyes. I hated that phrase. Most people just chalked it up to me being an edgy teenager resentful at the world as most are. Truthfully I just never knew where my home was supposed to be.
I was always told by my parents that my home was Michigan. Why wouldn’t it be? I was born in Detroit. All of my family lived here. My dad made a name for himself there as they hoped I would in the future. I loved Michigan, but none of this made it feel like home. Before even starting middle school, I had lived in seven cities. None of them felt like home.
When I was younger, moving so much didn’t affect me. I wasn’t old enough to be able to comprehend object permanence toward my relationships, so it never mattered. It was just on to the next adventure in a new state. As I entered my formative years in elementary and middle school, I realized how great it was to settle down.
In 2012, in the middle of the school year, my parents announced that we were moving from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I was in 4th grade. This move made it my seventh. This was the first move that I can recall being genuinely upset about. To my dismay, throwing a fit did nothing to prevent the inevitable.
I actually really enjoyed Pittsburgh the second I got there. It wasn’t difficult to make friends, I had quite a lot only a few months in. It was here that I really got to understand what it was like to have consistency in my life. Finishing a school year knowing that I’d be seeing the same people after summer break for the first time was surreal. I started to actually gain a sense of community. I started to feel like this was home. I breezed through the remainder of elementary school in Pittsburgh, happy that for once I got the experience of stability.
As middle school started, I began falling into the wrong crowd. At least that’s what my mom told me. We weren’t bad kids, but rather the type that your mom advises that you avoid for being bad influences. I didn’t care though. I had a tight-knit group of friends that had each other’s backs no matter what.
2016 was one of the best years of my life. I was in eighth grade. Me and my friends were set on making the most of our final year in middle school. After all, who knows if we’re going to share the same classes in high school. We spent the year exploring abandoned buildings, stealing Pokemon cards from gas stations, and most importantly doing just barely enough to scrape by in school. We were total losers, but at the time we thought we were so cool. These memories albeit completely illegal and certainly irresponsible were the ones that made me feel like I finally fit in somewhere. Even if it were among idiots.
That same summer my dad announced that our family would be moving again. The destination this time was Lincoln, Nebraska. I didn’t believe him at first. I laughed internally thinking that this was some cruel joke and that he’d tell me he was just kidding. It felt like everything I had built in the last five years came crumbling down. Breaking the news to my friends was one of the single hardest things I’ve ever had to do. The night I told them, we reflected on all the things in high school and beyond that we would never get to experience together.
I tried my hardest to put on a facade for my father, telling him that I was completely fine with moving. We both knew I was lying. The guilt of knowing the moves were robbing me of a normal childhood weighed heavy on his conscience.
The day of the move came, and I had to say goodbye to everything and everyone I had known for the past half-decade. We promised to keep in touch. The long drive from Pittsburgh to Lincoln gave me 15 uninterrupted hours to negatively stereotype everyone and everything in Nebraska. I had convinced myself that I hated Nebraska before even leaving Pennsylvania.
I arrived in Lincoln in May, meaning I had to spend the summer completely by myself. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, the school year was here. It turns out that summer flies by quicker when you do nothing but watch anime and draw. I was determined to make my stay in Lincoln as great as it could be. I had developed a mindset that nothing matters and that people will like me for who I am. I never cared about if people didn’t like me, I probably wouldn’t be in their city for long anyway. I carried that mindset with me into my first day.
My first day of high school in Lincoln went well. My first whole semester went flawlessly actually. I had tons of friends, I was passing my classes like never before, and I was actually involved in the school for once. I started to feel like a better version of myself. Throughout the turmoil of daily life, not a single day went by where I wasn’t in touch with my Pittsburgh friends. They were all happy to hear that I was bettering myself. It turns out that while I was undergoing my teenage transformation, they were undergoing theirs.
I was excited at the prospect of staying in Lincoln. I just wanted to finish school with people I liked, and go to college for something I loved. I had made plans with some of my new friends to join the school newspaper next year. I really loved writing stories, poetry, anything. It was the summer after my freshman year of high school that I found out we would be moving again.
At this point it was just comedic. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of leaving people behind again. At this point, I was numb to it and was ready to just keep pushing forward. I had become a nihilistic drifter, just moving with the wind, settling wherever the world’s cold and uncaring grasp cared to drop me off. It just so happened that this time, I would be dropped off in Richmond, Virginia.
I carried that same optimism with me, knowing that there will be people at school who like me for my personality. I was wrong. For some reason, I didn’t fit in in Richmond no matter how hard I tried. I made one friend, who I’m still in regular contact with now, but that was it. It was here that I was over the social aspects of moving, I just wanted to get done with school. I worked as hard as ever to try to pass, so I could escape the cycle of moving, and settle down at a university somewhere.
The COVID lockdowns started in my junior year, the most inopportune timing imaginable. It didn’t interrupt my already nonexistent social life, which I had long given up on since moving to Virginia. It did, however, completely tank my GPA. I went from a solid A or B student, to just barely doing enough to graduate. Being at home made me lose motivation. I was bad at school, stuck at home and had no friends. It could not have possibly gotten worse. Or so I thought. It was at this point I found out that my friend group back in Pittsburgh was falling apart while I was gone. It was all so overwhelming. I had never felt more alone.
In March of 2021, I was emitted into a psychiatric evaluation center after a failed plan to take my life. It took hitting rock bottom for me to see what a blessing my life experiences have been. While in the psychiatric facility, I finally had someone to talk to about how much moving has affected me. I got my own therapist. Truthfully that’s all I needed. I credit him with showing me how much of a blessing moving around has been.
Recovering was far easier said than done. After getting out, I traveled back to Michigan for a few weeks with my dad, to see my family for one, but mainly just to get out of the state. This trip back home changed a lot. Being able to see my extended family made me feel far less alone. The feeling of knowing there are people out there who cared about me was one that I had taken for granted. I somehow talked my dad into letting me meet up with what was left of my friend group from Pittsburgh just a few weeks later.
Meeting with the few remnants of my childhood group felt cathartic. I hadn’t told them about the circumstances of which we were meeting. I didn’t want to worry them. I didn’t want them to think less of me. This is where my feelings around moving began to change.
As I sat and listened to them talk about how nothing in the city has changed, I pitied the experiences they had. Is it possible I didn’t miss anything? How boring must it be to wake up to the same routine day in and day out. I started to think about how everyday felt different, I started to feel lucky. I wasn’t tormented by the monotony of daily life, rather the craziness of the unexpected. I started to think of everything I’ve been able to experience that they hadn’t while they stayed in a dormant city.
I had never thought about how much of the world I had seen, or how many people I’ve been able to form connections with all over the country as a result of moving. I had always been too focused on the negatives. My social perception. My anxiety surrounding meeting new people. Most importantly, I was scared of not knowing where to go after high school. I didn’t want to stay in Richmond, truthfully I hated Virginia, but did I really want to move again? Even if I did, where was home? The answers were clear to me.
After I graduated high school, when my dad announced he had a job opportunity in Michigan, we all urged him to pursue it. I was excited to move this time. It was finally on my own terms.
The beauty of always being on the road is that you’re never trapped in the jaws of life. Anywhere can be home. I settled on the idea that home is where the people who care about me reside. I’m lucky to have a family in Michigan who love me unconditionally. If home truly is where the heart is, then my home is with my family in Michigan, and my friends in Pennsylvania. I know that no matter where I physically live, whenever they’re around I feel at home.
