In the past 10 years, I’ve moved to and lived in 4 different countries. Not a flex, just an exhausting reality.
I’ve moved about 13 times, on a quest to find a place to call home. I’ve lived by myself, in flatshares, with a boyfriend and in flatshares again. What’s funny is that no place ever felt like home.
I became so accustomed to not feeling at home that “not being home” was the closest feeling I’d get to feeling home. “I’m always with friends” and “I can live with anybody…I don’t care” were my go to’s. And I believed them.
I found comfort in having a bag that would accommodate every circumstance and I could stay anywhere without any notice. I called it “free”. What I recognise it as now is “ever-intrinsic fight or flight mode”. Last year, I was introduced to what a home can look like and it inspired and scared me how much I wanted it.
It takes a while to recognise that fitting into someone else’s home is not the sauce! This might be a “well duh” for you but for me, I needed to recognise that someone else’s home is never as welcoming as ones own.
I have always been a master at being an invisible housemate: quiet, clean, always at work, rarely at home. I’m an extrovert outside of my house but inside, issa ghost town.
I’m 29 now, self-expansion and growth is what I’m here for. So while I am gearing up to buy a place to live in by myself, I am making a pit stop to explore how to make a home wherever I am with whoever is around. Let’s see how it goes.
