I am thinking about home.

We moved the better part of the last thirteen years of our lives into a new house this week (with Mom doing the Herculean bulk of the work like some homemaking superhero), and while I’m typically resistant to change, this was a very welcome one. I felt it was an opportunity to start anew, somewhere new. (Something I’ve craved desperately for years, thus the upcoming trip to Berlin.) You pack up all the things that mean something to you, the best of you, and take it with you to what is essentially a beautiful blank canvas that has already been prepared to your specifications, and leave the baggage of the last decade behind.

The people who went in and out through your old front doors, they’re not walking through the new ones unless you want them to. Words that were spoken, or weren’t, they’re wind now; wind blowing through quiet, empty rooms and dissipating into nothing. Unwanted memories, regrets, they fade faster when you’re not reminded of them every time you lay eyes on the upstairs sofa set, or when you look at the telephone that was on the night table next to your bed; those hours upon hours of conversations become vague snippets of speech that don’t matter any longer, because more and more, you forget what you even used to talk about. You forget the sound of their voices.

You feel as new as your new home is, and already, this one feels like home. Not house, more than house; home. I see myself reflected in every corner of my room — literally because I went through a vain phase that never really ended and requested a lot of mirrors, and figuratively because every last bit of it was chosen by me. Should you walk into my space, you would be able to infer fairly accurately the kind of person I am, with all my quirks, nuances, interests, and contradictions; it has Regina stamped all over it, and I have the hardest time leaving it because it is warm and comfortable. I need none of my many, many, many defenses here; I feel safe. It’s me, and so I can be me.

I am thinking about home, and how home is not always a place.

Joseph, my best friend, was here earlier today. A spontaneous thing, like we often are. Sometimes we make plans and they fall through. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they change midway. Sometimes we disappear on each other (and we both always understand why, perhaps reach out a bit, and then wait patiently for the other to return, as he or I inevitably will). And sometimes it’s a matter of messaging “Hiii, what are you doing?” because there are no plans, so we make some. And that’s how he became the first friend to walk through the double doors into this new chapter of my life, and the first and only friend allowed into the new house so far by Mom, who is understandably not ready to entertain yet. (We still have lots to do. But she loves him.) I toured him through every room, then we headed up to mine to just do anything and nothing.

You come to realize later in life how important it is to be able to do nothing with a person, and how difficult it is to find people like that.

I marvel at how the universe works, because once upon a time in college, I was a stranger reading his LiveJournal and looking at his beautiful photos, then an acquaintance in the publishing industry, then this duo we are now. I marvel at how the people in my life — really in my life — seem to have appeared at just the right time, exactly when I needed them. I know this is how friendship has generally always worked, but it still amazes me anyway.

I think about how Joseph feels like home; someone I am always myself with. Someone I have never had to pretend with. Someone who has seen the best and worst of me, and someone I have also seen the best and worst of. Someone who I believe in, and who believes in me. Someone with whom I always feel safe.

And I think about our other friends; Bobby, messaging me and David from Berlin, regaling us with stories upon stories of shenanigans. We talk about stories, about how important it is to have them, and how it is necessary to live, to really live, in order to have brilliant and hilarious and unbelievable and beautiful and messy stories. “What will they remember when they’re old?” we wonder about those who are so cautious, but then again, we are a different breed, and although I was never his student in college (and cannot yet reconcile my obscenely handsome dancefloor partner and fake Facebook boyfriend with the published international academic that is his alter ego — shh, don’t tell), he has still been my favorite and most important teacher. He is too nomadic to be really home, but I visit, often, and it’s an unpredictable adventure every time. He brings such madness with him, and he can wheedle the most salacious secrets out of me and I never worry or mind because I know they are safe with him, just like his are safe with me.

La bella Alice from Sardegna, my loving Italian mother and fiercest, most fearless, funny friend, who was just another (beautiful and intimidating) face at Future once, who I now run to when I need to talk to a fellow girl (because according to Bobby I am a fagnet — OH MY GOD IS THAT WHY I’M STILL SINGLE?), who fills my life with warmth and love and wisdom and joy and Italian phrases that just don’t make sense in English sometimes (Paganini no repite, haha!), who nurtures all of us, who is so strong but also so sensitive, who is so passionate and endlessly kind, who is from the other side of the world. And yet we managed to find each other anyway, kindred spirits.

And I think to myself that this is home. The bed upon which I am writing right now, this is home. The insanely talented photographer who dipped his feet in our jacuzzi with me and used my phone to take a picture and freeze the moment forever, he is home. The friends I’ve spoken of and the ones I haven’t, they are home. Bobby’s Sacred Table at Cubao Z, that is home. The Godmothers’ table that has begun to assume Sacred status as well, that is home. (Anything said at the Sacred Table stays at the Sacred Table.)

If it makes you feel like you can be every last bit of yourself comfortably, without any pretenses or fear of judgment, then it is home. If it knows your darkest heart and still loves you anyway, then it is home. If it makes you feel safe, then it is home.

It is Valentine’s Day. I love, and am loved, today and on all other days. And I realize how many homes I have, and can’t imagine how I got this lucky.

(Photograph: Joseph Pascual)