Last night I stayed for the first time in my new apartment. The furniture is not here yet, and the boxes are not yet unpacked, but it already feels more like home than the last place ever did.
No matter how hard I strived, I could not make that room I was renting feel like a place to belong... I always felt like a stranger there.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try, the effort itself is not enough. Sometimes you can not force a place to feel like home any more than you can force a person to be your friend or a pair of clothes three sizes too small to fill comfortably.
Sometimes the chemistry is too bad, the space is too small, the energy is too dark... any number of factors can upset the balance and make it so you simply have to move on.
But the feeling of entering somewhere bright and open and welcoming makes up for the past few months. All the negativity from that dark hole-in-the-wall has been engulfed by the joy of having a place to call home.
