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Q5 Where do you feel you ‘properly belong’ now?
Where do I belong? Do I want to belong, properly?
'belong /v.intr. 1 be the property of... 2 have the right personal or social qualities to be a member of a particular group... 3 be rightly placed or classified...'
I think I'd rather be improperly placed (I'm forever being improperly classified). To 'properly belong' suggests limitations, expectations of appropriate behaviour, conforming to the norm.
I don't want that. I want to behave improperly. To be an artist, one has to. I'd love to trespass where I don't belong. I'm trying to pick up the courage to do just that.
Christine Wilks , Leeds, UK
Home is the lips of my beloved. As she loves the place where she was born that is where, I guess, my home is. I guess I shouldn't think about a second home, a tourist pad, a pied a terre, though I do have a cabin the forest. I feel at home there, too.
James Sutherland-Smith , Belgrade and other places
Home....There is a song that I remember from childhood "Where does your motherland start? Does it start from the picture in your ABC book? From the best friends living next door? From that song that your Mother sang to you when you were a child or maybe from the feeling that whaterver may happen to you it will remain your motherland ...'
So where does my home start? Why each time coming back from the trips and riding in a taxi I feel so happy seeing trees, buildings, people walking along the streets of the city where I live?
So I come to the front door of the apparment complex where I live and feel calm and confident, I open the appartment door and...coming into appartment I bring with me all the happy emotions about people, trees, buildings, streets of the city where I live in and I feel that this is my home and that I really belong here...
ELENA , Russia
belonging and not belonging to my place of birth in N. Ireland, to the imaginary space of Ireland,and to the semi-adopted homeland of spain and russia
Ray Ingram , Moscow
As HOME is understood as an environment where everything is more or less adjusted to the needs of a personality, the place where I belong is my rooms in my apartment, my apartment in my city, my city in my country and my country in my world. That is the place where I belong... properly belong...
Juris Tiltins , Riga, Latvia
Home is purely a state of mind
Nick , London
I feel that in this age of 'self' we ultimately belong to one another.
Ricky Swarvez ,
After spending just a few months away from what I truly felt was my home, and thought I belonged to, suddenly everything in my life changed into something completely different.
As days went by, that strange new place became more and more attractive to me, with its every little detail. It was not just the fact of that city being so beautiful, with all those amazing sea front piers where you can sit and have a cup of hot chocolate, or just enjoy the stunning view of the sea on a sunny day, with the Isle of Wight in the background, nor even its short, yet lovely streets, in which you feel like getting lost. No, it was not just that. What led me to think Portsmouth is the place I belong were the people in it, and the life-long friends I have brought in my heart when I left. I think home is where you feel comfortable, familiar, safe, happy...but above all, it is where your friends are. And the whole of it together makes me be sure: I will go back one day for good, because that is my home and where I belong.
Carmen Correia Saraiva , Montijo, Portugal
Home is the place
Where I like to stay
Whether it is dark or bright,
Sun, wind, rain, night or day.
Home is a part of us,
A feeling, a reaction,
It's a place of confort, security,
Almost reaching perfection.
It has only four letters,
However, it means a lot
And that is all what matters;
If you feel pain or sorrow
If you reach Home you know
You'll be there by tomorrow...
Diogo Marques , Portugal
With myself.
Kathy B , Cheshire
After I dropped out of university I lived in my car for just over a month. When my money ran out I drove back to my home town and my grandmother took me in.
Even though she died almost two years ago, I continue to live in her house. It has been up for sale for over a year; there have been numerous buyers but for various reasons the sale has never gone through.
Now the house is all but sold. I was supposed to leave it at the end of November, but the contracts still go back and forth and nothing is signed.
Because I never know from one month to the next when I will have to leave the house, I no longer feel at home there. There is no security.
My closest friends have long since left town. Many now live abroad. I have little face to face contact with anyone and communicate using email. I speak to a lot of people on line - professors and academics - people who can teach me things. If I did not have the internet, I would talk to no-one.
I am unemployed. My last job involved taking care of my grandmother, who was disabled. No-one wants to hire someone who has been out of work for so long. This year I wrote over 1000 letters of application and in return received a steady trickle of letters informing me that I was surplas to requirements.
I do not feel I could function in a working environment, anymore. All my self-esteem has been chipped away. I am so angry that sometimes I have to force it back down or I would do something terrible. Sooner or later someone will say the wrong thing to me and I will hurt them.
I don't belong anywhere. When I do become homeless I will disappear into London. I don't want to be a part of this society. I am not included. All the doors are shut or are closing.
I have no expectations of anything.
I
Jonathan Kepple , NFA
Road beyond a certain line
Feels like heaven: is divine
Simone Veenstra , Galway, IRL
I belong in this place where I feel safe and protected, where a cat sleeps by the fire and snuggles in my lap, and where I spend my days with the love of my life and think towards the future. This place I call home, and home is where I belong.
Shaun Eyles , Australia
The answer to that lies in my future. I belong where I am going to go. I have faith in my future because of the ones that surround and love me. To belong is to be a part of something and as far as I can see I belong only to me. I am a part of a family; a group of friends and a work force, but none of these belong exclusively to me.
Only my thoughts are private and mine alone and perhaps it gets lonely sometimes but my mind is mostly my home.
Laura Shade , Chesterfield
,
To belong is to have a group of people, who's hearts are all singing the same song.
I am lucky I belong altough some see it as wrong.
Mark Peel , Greenock, Scotland
At the moment I don't belong at the family home although this is where I feel true. I belong in my ambitions, values and memories and am searching for the physical space where they will feel comfortable.
Kelly Pipes , Leicester, England
I will never belong to my family.
For they crave to be normal.
I will never belong to my friends.
For when they're around, I'm absent.
I also don't belong within my own heart.
I feel I belong when in bed at night.
It is not the room, the house, the locality.
What matters is the warm embrace of life's doona.
The friendships of my stuffed toys.
And their patient listening.
I also belong outside, in the world.
Anywhere at all, it does not matter.
For the flowers cheer me.
And the trees listen, well.
In the end, I feel, I belong everywhere!
Renee Betlehem , Vic, Australia
Belonging has for so long been about a place. When I believed that home was a place, I was bereft at the knowledge that I did not have such a thing I could trust in or feel safe in as a child. But home, and belonging is not about a place, because places come and go and we come and go from them. Home is about who I am and how I live and how I love. True belonging is about listening and living according to what I hear. It's about finding union between my life and my spirit. It's about living with God and with people. In love, and in loving is where I find my place now and where true home has always been. My home now is found within the love I share with my husband, our son, our friends, with God. Home is a spiritual state and I find resonance in this life for the spiritual home I can only dream about now. Belonging can never be just about geography, but about how I live and how I love. That's my resting place, and I feel that I 'properly belong' when I am loving, when I am living with integrity. That's being at home and so even if I lose everything, I will never lose my home.
Maura Bedloe , Hobart, Tasmania
I got your back/you got mine
I'll help you out/anytime
to see you hurt/to see you cry
it makes me weep/and wanna die
and if you agree/to never fight
it wouldn't matter/who's wrong or right
if a broken heart/needs a mend
i'll be there/till the end
if your cheeks are wet/from drops of tears
dont you worry/let go of your fears
hand in hand/love is set
we'll be friends/untill the end
Bianca Hellweg , Austraila
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