This morning is the first morning I've been able to wake up by myself at 9 am. It is the first morning I've woken up feeling rested, even though I didn't fall asleep until 4 am.

It must have been the sunshine peeking through my blinds that roused me, or the mere fact that something inside knew that this was the first piece of Spring.

Sunlight shimmers in through the large windows of my apartment, making my hair and skin electric. I feel something close to happiness at this fact that I'm awake to see the light of morning, and that it is no longer gray and ashen.

I feel that winter always makes me a cold girl, my eyes and mannerisms mechanical. It makes me hopeless, with no sign of life.
I love spring because of the way it brings back memories. I love it for its sense of birth. I also love the rains in the spring, the soft sound outside my window. It isn't that icy rain that chills you to the bone. It's something completely different.

I love this weather because it reminds me of when I was in Sweden, the inspiration I felt with my camera as I walked along the cobblestones, passing people I would never know.

There's a safety to that.

I wrote this during the summer, I think it explains how I feel about this entire sentiment in a more eloquent way-

Once I saw a film about these young bohemians who, on the outside, seemed so happy in their lives. They would go out and sit in cafes all night, creating art and acting as if everything was an adventure. But when money fell short, or they failed to fulfill any obligations, they had no one to catch them. Watching them made me sad because they seemed so lonely in their chaos. They needed a home, a support system. I feel that with my family I am either out of place, or I am expected to help out. I feel that when I am with them I am selfish or stupid for getting scared of things or for being sad. For a long time I didn't have anyone to confide in and that hurt more than anything. I have enough trouble communicating my thoughts, I don’t need any further alienation. I just find myself surrounded by many distant friends, superficial relationships that fill certain tasks or needs. But I know that I hold onto the few people I am real with more than anything.
Maybe we are meant to go out into the world and find separate families that fill the needs our biological families could not. I think it's part of our survival. Maybe that's why we fall in love, because we know that if we can share everything with at least one person and have them understand in a way our family could not, we have filled some void. Maybe soul mate is another word for twin. And maybe we have several.

It's really true, isn't it?

For a long time I belonged to people, to whoever was closest to me. Whether it was my mother in Seattle, my father in Europe, or a lover, it was never truly a place.

Sweden will never truly be mine because I had to break free from someone there to stay true to myself. But it is beautiful and it was the place where I was born-If I had been born in the states I would not be who I am today. I also would not be named Mika (short for Mikaela) but something more all-american, like Brooke.

The Carolinas cannot be a home either. It's where I went and saw my relatives this summer; the stinging of emotion when I realized who I had lost when I was there. Who I would never get back, someone I'd lost when I was only fourteen.

But death in old age is like that, I guess. It takes people away from you while you're young, while you're just a witness.

Seattle was my home, but it was a home I despised for the company I kept in high school, or lack thereof I guess. It is a record of my youth, of my loneliness, of my discovery of the act of survival.

My mother wants to sell the house and move back to the Carolinas. I cannot blame her, she deserves to live in a place that is warm and familiar, with clean sand beaches and sunlight that shimmers through the window. She's extremely ill and this is something that I think would at least give her a bit of peace.

In that house I planted gardens, drew on walls with crayon, made a bedroom lined with collages. In that house I was an honors student, an anorexic, a loner, an artist, and in the end...someone who surprised everyone with her success before her departure.

That house and I are like old friends, every year it becomes more covered in vines-a ruin of my childhood and proof that it existed.
We've been through storms and earthquakes together.
Harsh winters and summers so warm that all the windows had to be left open.

Like me, it doesn't look like what it is.
Maybe that's why I love it in its old age.
When you step inside, you can see a view of the lake like a secret.

That house is beautiful to me, underneath all of the things it has weathered and alterations my father has bestowed upon it, I will always see myself there.

But it is no longer my home; even though my mother and little brother still live there at this moment.

At this point in time I do not have a home.

-Mika Mae Jones