My mama used to say that home is where you could escape from the world, where you could shut reality out, where only what you allowed in could stay in. Home is where you could feel safe.

It’s a beautiful sentiment, but much too antiquated for my tastes, though I never told mama that. She wouldn’t have appreciated anymore of my cynicism, rest her soul.

You see, safety is an illusion, the kind of cheap trick a street magician would pull. It ain’t anyone on the street trying to convince us, though, but every bastard at the top of the social food chain selling us this particular bad bill of goods. I refuse to buy it. I understand on a near molecular level that life is short, brutal, warlike, that it always has been and always will be. Humans are dumb, stupid animals that panic at the slightest inconvenience and lash out with nuclear fire when they don’t get their way.

Nah, safety is impossible to achieve so long as our species exists the way that it does. I would apologize for being so bleak or so blunt, but an apology would imply that I won’t be this way again. Another lesson from mama, that, saying “I’m sorry” means you’ll turn away from that behavior. I’m not apologizing for who I am, not anymore. They cynical, the bleak, the blunt—that’s all me.

Through all of that, though, through the dark lenses with which I view the world, though all of mama’s lessons—whether or not I agree with them—I’ve seen some beautiful things, witnessed events and actions that brought me to my knees in joy. Despite what I think of the universe, I met you in it, so there has to be some amount of good floating through the cosmos.

There is some truth to mama’s definition of home, though she was wrong in calling it a place. No, home for me is where you are, wherever that happens to be. With you, I am safe.