the journey of multiple homes

 “How is it having multiple homes? It's like having multiple places where you feel free and just yourself!”

 

I’ve had this phrase on my writing prompts for so long, I can’t even remember when I wrote it in my notes or when I passed it to the writing board. But, as with everything, I believe that everything has a reason and looking back knowing that I wrote the phrase somewhere in 2022, I can say that right now is a much better time to write about it than last year.

 

2022 was the year of many houses, but many of them were not homes. I moved from the building I had two different rooms for three years with the same roommate. A building and both rooms with so many memories. This was, besides my first home, the third place I ever felt at home, like when you get into the house/apartment, and you feel that peace of mind and calm. The third place is not called to talk about ahahah.

Going back to the building and room, I spent quarantine completely alone for a whole month there and had so many weeks of anxiety and feeling depressed all together but had so many moments of laughter and deep into-life talks and just singing and dancing and making TikTok and crying about life and about college with my roommate. What I truly remember most aren’t the bad moments, my sleepless or too long nights of sleeping because of anxiety, the months of exams and papers at college when we couldn’t even talk with each other because we were crazy, or the times I didn’t want to make food and still had to because mom wasn’t there or putting the clothes to dry at midnight because I forgot about them during the day in the washer – well I remember a couple of these days. But the ones I remember the most are the nights we would go out to dance, or the ones by the end of college that we would go out at night just to walk and eat ice cream and the dance parties in the room and laugh all the way because of stupid stuff. I remember cooking together and for each other and I remember the sisterly moments when we would get mad and then makeup. And all of that is why it felt so much like home because I had a sister there.

 

Just before covid, during my first year in college, my parents moved houses. And then covid hit and I had to go back to my parent’s house and make the little, tiny room that we weren’t really expecting me to live in but just spent some nights in so it literally just at a little closet and a bed with my bookshelf – it wasn’t bad, but it was far from what I was used to. I stayed there for 3 months and then moved back to college for a month and a half and then back again to my parent’s house for two months for summer vacation. What I remember most about this house is how much I wrote, deep in the night, I used to go to the rooftop of the house and stay there just looking at the stars and writing in the dark. I had a lot of deep frightening moments with deep feelings that I cried my eyes out and wrote about. I remember moving out again. I remember some of the walks I used to do around the neighbourhood, listening to music. I remember the beautiful yellow house in front of my window and how the sun would shine on it. I remember how the sun would rise in my room and I could barely look out the window, but I still made myself look because it was gorgeous. I remember how closer that house was to my boyfriend’s house and how much closer I was to the train station and how great that was. This house felt like home for a couple moments, but still didn’t feel quite like home because I didn’t believe it really was.

 

A year later my parents moved to an apartment in town, near to our family and back into the city I grew up in. They made the move just before covid hit again, in January of 2021, and during that second big quarantine I was given the possibility to stay in my residency in college, and I decided it would be great to have some time just for myself and heal so many wounds. I remember how the silence would fill the room and how quiet it was. I remember the calls from my parents being scared for me because I was alone and wanting me to go home, but I didn’t know that home, didn’t feel like home yet, so I continued where it felt like home for my health and the sanity I was trying to build. I remember that that whole month I talked face to face once and on the phone a couple times, it was truly a deep cleaning moment. And then I went to my parent’s house and stayed there for a whole month, it was a difficult one because, as expected, it didn’t feel like home, I didn’t feel comfortable even though basically all my things were there. I remember how funny it was to fight to keep my big girl bed and how hard to was to make it ahahaha. I don’t have many memories from that month. I went back to this house three months after when the semester ended. That summer the feeling of home sank in me because of routine, day after day it started to feel more like home and now because I can’t go very often, sometimes I miss the quiet and calm peace of my room in my parents’ house.

 

Last year, in May of 2022, I moved from my college residency to another apartment where I knew no one and I shared a room with a girl for two months that I talked to like five times. It was a summer like never before, I was just grateful to have a place to live and to have a bit of peace and quiet outside of work and my internship – it was just a place where I went to sleep and keep my things – it wasn’t home.

 

In September of 2022, I moved once again to my new apartment, the one that is really making me feel independent, because oh my I chose it, I came to see it, I did the deal and I pay for it! SAY WHAT??! It’s possible, believe it! And still, it didn’t feel like home for three months, there wasn’t the peace of mind and quietness expected you know? And that was giving me some trouble in my state of mind, like making me question everything related to it. And then, again it sank in me, it would only feel like home if I put in myself that mindset and the routine for it to become home.

So now, for it to be my home, my routine is starting to settle down – going to bed, waking up, finding out the home routine with the chores and tasks, trying to settle down the routine with college and all the rest. One thing that really is helping is writing again because that’s something that just helps my mind calm down wherever I am and especially at home because that’s where (as expected) I feel more vulnerable so I can write more freely.

 

To summon up, the journey of multiple homes is something that happens to all of us, no matter the type of life we live, but the hard truth to swallow is that is not easy to be somewhere and want to be elsewhere, and missing family and friends because you’re away, and not having all your stuff that you might need with you – oh if I suffered in college moving everything every year! Don’t be scared of the new place or finding a new home and don’t close up to making it your new/another home – because you have one already, it doesn’t mean you can’t have another one, you’re not going to be betraying anyone or yourself, it’s the way of life.