What is but a home if not a miserable place of secrets? Home, like many words, has a solid definition but what it actually entails differentiates from person to person. The common definition would define it as a place of permanent or semi-permanent residence but there's a lot more to what I would describe a home as. As someone who lives in the school dorms, I'd struggle to call it a home just yet. It fits the definition but isn't 'homely' for me or at least what I'd call a home. To me, what makes a home isn't as much the home itself but more 2 main things; time spent in the home and family or a sense of community with others. More time spent in a place gives one the ability to really 'get' the place and the subtle nuances of the home. You could have spent a day in a friends' house but you would have only seen the more surface level home and not the more nuanced aspects of it. However, as you visit the house more often, you'd come to see some of the more lowkey parts of the house. Although this doesn't mean you have "gotten" the house, you would have come to seen it more than the furniture and beds. But what really makes it a home is that sense of security and comfort that comes with living with others, especially family. It's probably the main reason why I wouldn't call my dorms a home, it lacks that sense of togetherness I would feel if I was living with family. Homes are a mix of those 2 aspects and using the basic definition of home doesn't really get that aspect of homeliness.
As someone who has moved, travelled and lived in a lot of places, there are a lot of places I consider dear to my heart. These places aren't just regular places, it's places that have changed my life or places I have known since childhood, places that have been so important to making me the person I am that I cant imagine my life without these places. Aberdeen and Lagos are good examples of places that are so important to my person, that there is no me without them.
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