Searching for a Home

I have no home.

I was raised in a delicate balance of languages, cultures, and religions, used to changing addresses and phone numbers too often to count. Certainly, I have met many people, and have had a multitude of experiences. This allowed me to have something in common with almost anyone, and yet never finding someone like me.

As I nonchalantly watched other people living, somewhere down below in the mundane world of stability and routine, eating lunches with coworkers and enjoying weekends with their families, it occurred to me that their mere physical presence makes their houses grow and become homes.

Their neighbors saw them buy this house, their coffee shop waitress knows their name, their friends from high school invite them to basketball. They have a community; they are a community.

Ties, even those of blood, can only be forged if you spend time together, if you’re there for each other more often than not, if they saw previous versions of you. For the sake of belonging, I was willing to try this “immobility”. I moved to my birth town, facing my ancestry, adapting to my culture that over the years was but a shade of myself.

In my house, I did not find what I was searching for. But I became a community for others. Giving a space to those who want to be fully understood, even if they will never understand me.

We helped each other.

We changed each other.

Right now, my house stands empty. I travel, like I used to. But now there are people waiting for me to return.