Looking for "home"

It's funny that being away from the places with which I am most familiar did prompt some revelations. Even though I am thrilled to be returning to California, the place I most think of as "home" is San Francisco and I only technically lived there for a couple years. I worked there for years and have family who live there so I have spent plenty of time there.

The suburbs where I marked the time of my youth and adolescence holds little draw for me. I know those places, but they don't fill me with the electric and comforting feeling I think I am supposed to feel at the thought of "home".

Have I spent too much time with books and movies and artistic conceptions of "home"? Have I internalized some fabrication of reality? Have I internalized the kitch version rather than the pure expression of that electric feeling?

I don't think I am alone in feeling like the place doesn't really matter, especially when it all looks the same and has the same vague concept of personality. I think that's why San Francisco feels like home for me...because it is real for so many people. Walking though San Francisco, I can feel there are people around me who believe in it and like it. I don't feel that much in Dublin and I didn't feel that much in the suburbs where I was raised.

I'm looking forward to going home. I'm going to be a tourist in my city and get to know it again. We've been apart for a little while and need to get reacquainted. And I think I'll be welcome.