Home, Rewritten.

I grew up in a house, but I never felt like I belonged in it. It was a place I came back to after school or work, where I slept and kept my things, the place I got my last name from, but it never really felt like a place where I could fully exhale. Even when I’m surrounded by my family, I usually feel like a ghost in my so called “home,” wandering through rooms that know every footstep of mine but never my thoughts, while every noise sounds like TV static.

There is a strange guilt that comes with those feelings. You’re told from a young age that home is supposed to be where you’re from, and that you should always be grateful for what you’re given and then, naturally, a sense of belonging will come to you. I am grateful for everything I have; so I told myself that the distance I felt was just a strange thought in my head. But it lingered, staying in the back of my mind all the time. So I started to decorate my room in a way that fit my personality, thinking maybe then it would feel more like home. And maybe if I adjusted myself a little more, just enough for the house to start feeling like it was holding me instead of containing me.

But it never really did.

I felt homeless, not physically, but mentally. It came to me that feeling homeless isn’t simply about lacking a place. I felt homeless because I lacked a space where I could be unguarded. I yearned for a place where I could just exist without feeling out of place. Until my best friend moved in with me for a few months—when I finally changed the way I understood that word: home.

That’s when everything started to make sense and fall into place. Maybe home was never meant to be a building. It was always meant to be a person. Not in a romantic way, but in the simplest one. It’s fascinating how certain people make you feel less alone inside yourself. The house I lived in started to have more sound to it, not TV static, but the sound of someone existing with me, not just around me. Laughter in the kitchen, the door to my bathroom opening when it had once only been used by me, late night talks, and the sound of someone calling my name from another room that used to be empty. The house had never been like this. Or maybe it had always been like this whenever I was next to her, wherever we were.

It’s a strange thing, at least for me, to realize that the place I come from isn’t the place where I feel most like myself. There are strangers who would agree that belonging doesn’t always follow bloodlines or addresses. But I know this much: no place has ever made me feel as real as the right person’s presence. And that’s what home has been for me all along, not somewhere I return to, but the person I return to.