Utopia was calling.  In my mind I saw the sharp lines and soft edges so clearly, the clean and quiet streets and verdant parks.  My family came to greet me, loved ones surrounded and comforted me, complementing my growth as a human being, celebrating my return from adventures afar.

I was hopeful, expectant; ebullient even at the thought of seeing their faces smiling a reflected smile.

As the train rolled into the town that bore me unto this earth I was reminded of how far I have been, and how much I have changed.  The leaden sky hung like a turgid promontory, like the ceiling to the cell which held me locked away for so many years and now came back to harness me once more.

It was flatter than I remember; like the air had been crushed from its lungs and the life had fled to another, better, more deserving realm.  The breathtaking mountains of Macedonia seemed so far away in space and time all of a sudden, the bluest skies and purest snow caps all but a water colour in my memory and my heart weighed a little heavier in my chest.

The blazing sunlight warming the crystal ocean wilderness of Greece seemed nothing more than a figment of my imaginings, as if I had slept in my cell for an age, dreaming of the world I yearned to see; only to awaken back in the womb of an unwanting mother.

My family is a collection of fragments, beautiful shards of splintered glass from a most valuable relic that can never be fixed.  I hold tightly to one piece, grit my teeth through the pain as it carves deep lacerations into my hands, and I wash away the blood with stinging saline tears.

I must release this conditional love, this rejection machine that has always; always made me feel second to everything else.  I am not the little boy anymore, nor the angry youth.  I am something new, something without those pitiful needs, born of a desire to be a complete human being; and I am strong again.

My home is with them, my true loved ones; my true family.  Those that were always there before will always be there in the future, carried gladly in my thoughts, memories, laughter and tears, but the future is mine and belongs to my ambitions.

Wherever I go, so long as they are there; I will be home.