Home isn’t just the four walls but the messiness in between.
Home is the togetherness that holds you up, the raw vulnerability that can tear you down.
But it’s the compassion, care, empathy, love, and communication where you find home in each other.
In a world that can often feel chaotic and uncertain, home is finding someone to share life’s messiness and beauty of life with.
My partner and I have lived together for almost five months now. It’s felt longer in the best possible sense. Our lives have been intertwined.
Before we lived together, we each had our own separate studios across town from each other — some say that our relationship was long distance in the most LA-sense. We would come together as our best selves, and when apart, we would live the ups and downs of life.
But now, we share a space in which we can create new memories together.
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I internalize many of my emotions, especially when they result from stress. It is one of the things I’ve worked on in therapy. Communication.
The ups and downs we may have gone through separately in the past are now different. They are lived in person, together.
The capacity to feel, recognize, and hold space for those moments, I realized, is important.
Since living together, it’s been a challenge to allow myself to feel when in her presence, even if her presence was in a separate or adjacent room.
But I’ve learned that I didn’t have to work through the emotions alone. We would love each other through it all.
The ability for me to recognize that these battles aren’t alone but in partnership was a hard lesson to learn.
But, it was important.
A sense of comfort and safety comes with being able to openly communicate your emotions with your partner, especially when you feel stressed or overwhelmed.
It takes a lot of courage and vulnerability to allow yourself to feel and share those emotions with someone else.
But the beauty of it all strengthens your bond.
This is one of the challenges but also one of the most rewarding parts of living together with your partner.
Sharing space and finding a home in each other, especially when life gets messy.
Home isn’t the physical space we occupy but the people we share it with.
Home is the messiness and vulnerability that comes with sharing your lives with one another.
Home truly is where the heart is.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
