Better than Disneyland

What is home? For me right now home is forgetting. Forgetting yourself, where you are, and everything that normally holds you and keeps you stationed in a moment. It can be when you are in a certain place or with a certain person or some certain time you spend, but home to me is the complete forgetting of discomfort and like a mini oblivion from everything that holds you back. The only other feeling home needs is familiarity because otherwise I'd be conflating home and happiness. There's a sense of the familiar, a sense of security, that makes you feel warmth. I feel like we carry the capacity of home inside us too, taking it with us wherever we go, but that it can only be realized at certain junctures in our lives. Sometimes you can be at the house you grew up in and be surrounded by the feeling of home and at other times all you want to do is get away from that place and it's not home at all, only a familiar and lonely place. It happens with people too where sometimes you're with someone and there's this incredible sense of home and safety but at other times that same person can make you feel lost and unsheltered. And it happens with other places as well; there have been some places I have lived in or visited that have made me forget and felt as familiar as my bones. I can recall a day just sitting with my friends at our favorite cafe near my apartment in Paris, our waiter (surely he belonged to us, or at least he does in my memory) calling us princesses everyday (for surely we were) (I love how some memories are mini fantasies) and there was nothing else then, only friends, coffee, comfort, solidarity, and a breathtaking city all around. But when I visited Paris again, it was still magical, but it no longer held that exact same feeling I had then. I wish I could say that home can develop if you stay in a place long enough or stay with someone long enough or I guess just will it to happen but that's not true. Familiarity develops yes but not that feeling of home. You can't force home. And when you're there you never want to leave and it's like one of the best places in the whole world. Even better than Disneyland.