Lydia Thompson

Olivia was the first person I called when I got the idea for this project. I was just beginning a seven hour drive to Asheville, N.C., and because I never call her, she picked up the phone worried that something was wrong. Providing very little context, I asked where she felt most at home. She blurted out: "where all my shit is."

Olivia had only been living in her house for two weeks by the time we were able to sit down and talk for this project. Though everything in her room was in its place, the space still felt like it hadn't really been lived in. Everything was a little too neat (to her credit, I'm sure she cleaned in anticipation of the interview). I brought a bottle of Casillero Del Diablo–her favorite wine–and after struggling for a while with a particularly difficult cork, we sat down on her bed to talk. 

One of the first things I wanted to know was how being in a new house impacted her feelings of home. She explained the strange sensation she had when she first moved in, how neither her new room nor her old one felt very much like home. But in only a matter of days, feelings of comfort and belonging started to take shape.

"It took using this space as a whole by doing the things that I love to do. I had people over and I cooked for them, I read in the house in all of the different spots. It's kind of like when a cat sleeps on each chair. 'This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.' That's what I did. Now I feel like this is my space completely."

During my conversation with Olivia, I got the impression that feeling at home with all her things was borne out of necessity more than anything else. Her parents moved away from her childhood home in Garrison, N.Y. when she was 19, and their new house in Sarasota, F.L. never really held those same feelings of home for her. After spending five years in Sarasota, four of which she spent in undergrad, she moved to Washington, D.C. to find a job.

"It's tough going to my parents house because it's not where I grew up. I felt no connection to the new place they moved, and I felt a lot of resentment toward them for that because they took my home away from me... it feels like a fake version of home for me because it's just not where my emotions are, aside from my parents being there.

"I loved my house [in Garrison]. I associated home with that house. The way I feel when I go to Garrison [now] is sad. I feel a longing when I'm there, and it's my hometown, but I don't feel comfort when I'm there anymore.

"To me, that feeling of comfort, of things, of where I put my head at the end of the night, that's where home is. It's something to grapple with to think of home as being something that is so mobile. I lived somewhere else two weeks ago, I live somewhere new now... And I don't want it to feel like it's any less of a home because it's a mobile sort of thing and might change so constantly.

"So to me, true home is the bed that I like, fluffy pillows, the place that I can bake bread in a literal way."

I told Olivia that I find her ability to make a home wherever she is admirable. Though many of our friends lead similar lifestyles, I know just as many people who put down roots in their hometowns and never leave. For most of my life I never really understood this desire to stay put. I honestly still don't, but Olivia framed it in a way that helped me understand.

"I think a lot of it is creating the space where, when you walk into it, you feel a little bit lighter. So some people might feel as though if they go too far, they're never going to feel that sense of lightness that they feel at home. So why leave? Because they have it.

"I think other people will always feel a heavy burden of 'what if? What could be?' if they don't leave. So that's why people like you leave... If I stayed in Sarasota another year I wouldn't have been happy. You leave when it's the right time, and when the lightness, the comfort, is starting to be outweighed by the heaviness and the unrest of wanting to see something new and challenge yourself in that way." •