|
The idea of leaving home is a difficult one to discuss without understanding the meaning of home. Most people combine
the term with house; but I see two completely different things when I look at the words. House is in many ways
a cultural symbol for wealth or status whereas home is more of a symbol of safety. It is somewhere one can feel safe
from the outside world. The idea that house and home are similar probably comes from our early American background as settlers.
Different from the Native Americans whom, since they were rather nomadic to follow their food source saw the land as home,
the early colonists made one specific location their home and rarely moved away from it. Since I have gone to college I have
lived a life where I move from location to location quite often. Thus I see houses more as temporary places of location;
a house is not a home until you make it into one. So what creates the idea of home is what you personally instill in it,
not the house itself. On the other hand, I do not think that home always needs to be looked at as a literal place
of location. A home can be seen in much more of a metaphorical light. My own home comes in the form of my mother, and the
day that I left home was the day that I came out to her as being gay.
People leave home for many reasons, sometimes by choice, sometimes through force, or sometimes as a matter of circumstance.
In my case, it was probably the latter. Due to the fact that my very existence is counter-culture, I have been cut off from
my home my mother. I no longer have the financial and emotional support that I have been so used to possessing. My
mother has always been the one that I looked to for comfort and support in much the same way that a person can feel much more
at ease when entering their house after a hard day at work. Thus, in my experience of leaving home, I must learn to live
without that support. In American culture, it is expected that upon leaving home one must learn to do many things on their
own because one valued form of cultural capital is independence and self-sustainability.
To fully understand my experience I must bracket the reasons why I was forced to leave in the first place, as they show just
how important certain aspects of our culture are. My sexual orientation is generally not accepted in our culture, though
the acceptance is growing. As time passes and people are becoming more and more open-minded, I can reasonably say that my
mother is of the older way of thinking. Her idea that I have broken some cultural law is so important to her that I have
been forced to carry on without my home. Since she was my emotional and intellectual example, I have lost that capital.
Overall, it would be difficult to sum up the concept of leaving home in the allotted length of this paper. I could however
say that it is a situation that most, if not all Americans deal with at one point or another. Since independence is so valued,
it is almost universally expected that everyone will leave home at one point or another to learn to make a living on his or
her own. Whether that home is a house, a person, or some other source of safety, everyone must eventually break away to become
a fully functional person in American society.
|
