recently, i got this question:
“i think it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on what ‘home’ means—i know you’ve already written a little bit about it, but maybe it’s worth its own post? since you’ve lived in so many different places and maybe don’t associate ‘home’ with a particular place but rather a feeling?
—and of course! i’m always happy to answer your q’s. here are my thoughts on “home”:
as you all probably know, i grew up in stockholm. during a few years when i was around 19-22-ish, i lived and studied in västerås, a city about an hour away from stockholm. one of those years, i also spent in the south of france. i’ve also bounced back and forth to norway from sweden a lot, before finally moving to the u.s. in january of 2014. this is what i feel about my top places:
stockholm. clearly, i’ve spent the majority of my life in sweden. stockholm will always be a home for me—although it’s not a 100% given feeling. i’ve moved around and lived in many different places in stockolm, and since my parents have been divorced basically my whole life, i grew up in two different parts of town, while my school was in a third part of the city; so i don’t have a strong loyalty to only one part of the city.
there is something about sweden that i don’t feel for though—a coldness in the culture sometimes (and winter). i do know stockholm like the back of my hand though, and that is a nice feeling to have.
oslo. this place definitely doesn’t feel like a home to me in the sense that i know i’ll always be a guest there. but! what’s so nice about being in oslo is that it’s so culturally similar to stockholm, it’s a small city that you learn to navigate quickly, norwegian is easy to learn, and most of all—people really like you. you really feel wanted and appreciated there, and that’s a warm feeling i will always reciprocate for oslo.
san francisco. sf! my love. this is definitely where HOME is for me now (did you guess it?). although i have more history with stockholm, there is no place more than san francisco where i both 1) know it so well that i could draw a map of the city and write out all the street names in my sleep, but at the same time 2) feel euphoric about every single day that i get to live here. literally every day, i walk out on the streets and without exception, i’m thankful, and i try to conserve the feeling, because maybe it’s gonna go away some time, and if that day comes it’s gonna be a really damn sad one.
in the u.s., everyone can be american, because everyone is from somewhere else either way. you can be anything or anyone (and this applies to both sf and new york). oh how i love these two cities (if you’re wondering, leaving new york in january was a really really tough decision. i definitely miss that place every day).
i hope that clears it up a little bit, and that it wasn’t too long. just let me know if you guys have any more questions. i love to hear your reflections and what’s going on in your heads as well, besides just my own.
and have a lovely thursday, wherever you are in the world. <3
fick en fråga om var jag känner mig hemma eller hur jag tänker om vad som menas med “hemma” egentligen. så här är lite tankar om det.
stockholm har jag ju spenderat mest tid i (20+ år liksom), så det kommer alltid vara hemma. i oslo känner jag mig iofs alltid som gäst, men ändå som en alltid supervälkommen en! alla är så snälla där och det är så lätt att anpassa sig där liksom. men mest av allt känner jag mig hemma här i sf. inte bara för att jag lärt mig kanske varenda vrå av den här staden under de senaste åren, men också för att jag bara älskar den här platsen. varje dag är jag tacksam för att jag får bo här, för jag vet att det inte är en självklarhet, och att det är något som kan komma att tas ifrån mig. även new york känns lite så! saknar det varje dag alltså.
men ändå alltså. så fint att få göra några platser till sina. är verkligen djupt tacksam över mina olika hem runtom i världen. <3
