Welcome Home | Teen Ink

Welcome Home

June 4, 2015
By StefanF BRONZE, Novi Sad, Other
StefanF BRONZE, Novi Sad, Other
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Everything happens for a reason"


What is home? Is it a place where you live or have lived? Is it a place where your job is? Is it a place where your friends, girlfriends, boyfriends are? No. Home is where the heart is. Home is where your most beautiful memories are. It's a place where the most important people of your life come and go. You will find friends, loves, jobs everywhere. They will fly as you pass by. They might only be important to you for a short period of time. But what happens at home stays at home. Home is a place thats locked in your heart - every person, thing, memory that took a place at home has a special place in your heart.

What connects me to that one place - my real home is time.


I was just a child. I don't remember, it was so long ago, but I know. I simply know. As soon as I was old enough to remember, I remember almost every moment there. The ones I can't remember I find on old pictures at my grandparents apartment. While I was going through some though times in my life, that place was one of not many things I looked forward to. It helped me, I always felt better in there, like a crying child in mother's lap. I remember, I cried. I was in my mothers lap - In my mothers lap.

I was in love once. She was a nice girl, she was just a child. I was with my grandparents there and it was summer. We were like best friends, she was like a sister to me. And, I don't know, maybe I felt something more towards her. We were just children, lost in the cold world, and the only thing that could warm us up was being stupid. We wasted days as days faded into one. We were spitting, singing, fighting, playing, running...


What happened? Why do I hate you? Why had I even loved you? How could I even talk to you? What you did was horrible, what you did was just terrible. I hate you. Come on, how could I ever love you? I was just a child. We were just children.

I have great friends there. The most fun in my life I had there. I remember everything, it's all perfectly clean. Do you think I forgot last summer, when the water in the pool was cold so we went under the very cold shower at the entry of the pool, countend to 10 and then jumped in the pool, all three of us? It was warm then. Do you agree that jumping in the water with friends is the most powerful friendship feeling? Do you know that I will always think of that feeling when I hear "Up and down, jump off the deep end, Wreck this out, I should have left with you, With you!" on the radio? Don't you remember it was our favorite song? I remember the long bicycle rides to the pool on extremely hot summer days, I remember going to local football matches and having hard times there because I couldn't stop thinking of my favorite cat that had recently died? Watching FIFA World Cup 2010 and 2014 together? How about 2018? Playing football and tennis all the time? Coming back from excursion in Timisoara and meeting a girl who went in my school, and her sister who went to your school? The most unforgetable moment, a clash of worlds in my life that I fell in love with, and so many more... even from last month, last week - it goes on... I just hope we will stay friends. Comeon, don't leave me now! Who cares what others say, just don't leave me...
"Don't let us get sick, don't let us get old, don't let us get stupid alright?"

Grandma? Can you hear me? I just want you to know that I love you. I want to help you, but I don't know how. Why do you worry so much? Why are you scared? Be happy for God's sake! Can't we just be happy? And the tears start rolling down my eyes... Grandpa, please! Take a good care of her! I know it's hard, but do it for her! Do it for me, for us! Be strong, just be happy...come on grandpa, ask me when are we going to go there? Ask me, like you used to ask me all the time. Yes, I know we can't go and we will never go there again together, it will never be as it used to be, but just ask me please, "when will we go there?", and I will answer, as I always used to: "In the summer grandpa, in the summer."

Hey, don't cry! It's thursay, we will go there tomorrow after school! I know you're enough of school. I know you're enough of all the fake friends and moments that you love, and that one girl that you just keep thinking of in the shower. I know you're sick of all the hot buses and evil teachers, all the grades and studying. I know you're enough of the whole annoying city and everything in it. Of TV, Internet and Facebook. Of all the time you've wasted thinking of school, studying, friends...just a little more!

On friday evening you will be there, and you will feel at home, as always. Yes, Welcome Home! But something has changed... the worst thing that could've changed...

What is it? Her, them, time, weather, people, things, places, relationships, friends, loves, grandparents, worlds, everything?

But the worst thing that could've, should've and has changed - is ME.
And there I am.


The author's comments:

This is an essay about my childhood home, my real home. I go there pretty much every weekend in spring and on breaks. It's called Ba?ki Jarak.

I love you, thanks for everything! 


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