It's too complicated to actually sit and plan out. To even have expectations is an insult both to the fickleness of Fate, and to your intelligence, for not being able realize that. Yet we all do have expectations - of ourselves, and worse, of others.

People change..

You hear that all the time, but what...what does it mean? It means that as you live your life, and people live theirs, slowly but surely tiny imperfections will appear. Paths will diverge ever so slightly. They will converge, too, but once two lines finally meet they have nowhere to grow but apart. It's foolish to think people remain the same since the day you mert them to the day you die. The most you can hope for, particularly in the here and now, is that you will grow together, changing in the same ways, for a while atleast. Hope lives in the fact that we never stop growing...

There is no such thing as unconditional love, I realize. There's always, always something that could make that loves continuing existence impossible. The test of love is how extreme that limit is. What all can you forgive? What can you forget?

I don't even know where this stems from. Thinking of relationships, with people, with places. People - you can't avoid them. Places - you need a home. Everyone needs a home, even if it is a constructed cacoon where reality doesn't exist, and you're forever 17.

I've grown during this trip.

The word 'home' suddenly has a new meaning. It used to be a building, an actual brick and stone structure. Now, though, it has a more immaterial quality. It's a place, and knowing everything about it. It's a culture, and understanding why people believe what they do.
It's crisp winter mornings - where its not quite cold enough to put on a full-fledged sweater, but just right to drape a shawl around yourself. It's being able to call complete strangers 'bhai', and have conversations with them on everything from cricket to politics. It's the hug a man gives another man because they're friends, and theres nothing awkward about that physical touch. It's the shining, shimmering sea, with all those laundas off somewhere in the distance as you find a nice quiet spot to sink your toes into warm sand and just think. Or not think, as you prefer.
Home is in the arms of people. Give me a handful of certain people, and I'll be home anywhere in the world. Be it driving aimlessly through Karachi *trying* to get lost, or sitting on a bed in a flat in London till way too late, just talking, or sipping piping hot tea on a green porch.

Home is comfort, whichever way you find it.

All for now. I land in my current city in half an hour. Home is four months away. The thought - even just the thought - warms me.