Feels Like Home to Me

The unpacking of the suitcases. The flopping on your own bed. The collection, washing and distribution of laundry. The adjustment of the indoor temperature. The making of the cup of tea you've been thinking about since you left.

Coming home from you holiday isn't always as disappointing as I'd always assumed.

I remember hearing from friends and reading in articles about the joy of coming home from a holiday. They went on and on about that wonderful feeling of being home.

This was hard for me to comprehend because it's been long time since I actually felt at home anywhere. For over a year, I lived out of a rucksack. Home was really wherever my backpack was.

My partner Dave and I would tour around for months at a time, eventually returning to our small flat in Leeds. The Leeds flat wascozy but didn't have the 'home' appeal I could get used to. Sometimes we would land at his parents' house in the Toronto suburb. Again, it was another lovely warm fuzzy feeling place but not one that felt like my own.

Last March we decided we needed to settle for a couple of months. We choose Belfast and, we were lucky to find a place that had everything we wanted: central location, modern furnishings and a large fridge-freezer. Since then, we've become more and more comfortable in our surroundings.

We decided to treat ourselves this holiday season and spend two weeks away from Belfast without a backpack or a hostel.

We spent a week in the south of England with family for Christmas. It was wonderful to be in the English countryside and around family. We then jetted off to Tunisia, Africa for a week of all-inclusiveness--eat, drink and be merry.

When we left our Belfast digs, it would be two weeks to the day before we returned.

It's almost embarassing to admit what I was thinking the night before we left: 'This is the last time I will sleep in my bed for two weeks. And I'll miss it.'

'WHAT?' my inner voice bellowed, 'You are about to get away for two weeks of rest, relaxation, sun and surf and you are seriously thinking about how much you'll look forward to coming home?!?'

I must admit, I could never really understand this obsession of travellers to get back home.

The whole travel experience is to get away from what you know, right? You're supposed to get away from your comfortable surroundings and to embrace other places? You're supposed to be so comfortable in the new, exciting locale that you want to call it home, right?

Perhaps I was wrong.

Here I was, not even out of the house yet, and already I was missing my bed?

Suddenly this place we had found within two days of arriving in Belfast was home.

The thought was gone as soon as it came and I spent the next two weeks enjoying being away from the norm, being away from structure and buses and emails and work.

But when I walked in our door, late on Wednesday evening, and a wonderful warm and fuzzy feeling melted over me.

This was what it was like to enjoy coming home from holiday.

I was home. Or at least I was in an apartment that felt very much like it.