Having lived at thirty or so different addresses I can say I’ve never put a piece of furniture on the street nor sold one either I ever thought about afterward. However much I may have prized it in the acquisition or however long I owned it, once out of sight it lost all capacity to haunt me.
By contrast, people I’ve not spoken to in decades and may have not known all that well in the first place come back to my thoughts and elicit a pang or a smile.
Life, as my friend Scott says, is who you have, not what you have.
If you have ever suffered a broken heart or gone through a divorce or ended a deep friendship you know how entangling life with other human beings can be. No doubt you know this regardless.
If too often we look for the right thing to put socks in instead of the right person to cuddle up with that is a mistake of putting status over meaning, the comfort of transaction over the terror of vulnerability.
Still, the heart needs a home, as Richard Thompson sings.
Places fall into their own category. The way a place inhabits you has to do with its rhythm and shade, the time you spent there, the temper of life it offered you, who you shared it with.
Maybe, as Rockwell Gray says, home is where you want to be buried, have your ashes scattered rather than the place you were born.
If you are lucky, the map there available or not, home is always in front of you.