FRAGMENTS OF ME

Home

For a long time, I thought home was somewhere else.

A place I would reach once I became better, stronger, more healed.

A future version of myself I kept postponing until I felt worthy enough to arrive.

I searched for home in people.

In conversations that felt familiar.

In spaces that promised comfort but demanded silence in return.

I confused attachment with belonging.

I stayed longer than I should have because leaving felt like losing shelter.

Even when the roof leaked.

Even when the walls felt too tight.

I didn’t realise how often I abandoned myself in the search for somewhere to belong.

Home, I learned, is not found in the absence of conflict.

It’s found in the presence of safety.

It’s the place where your body can soften.

Where you don’t have to explain your feelings into exhaustion.

Where your voice doesn’t need permission to exist.

I used to mistake familiarity for comfort.

But familiar doesn’t always mean safe.

Sometimes it just means you’ve learned how to survive there.

Finding home meant unlearning that.

It meant choosing environments that didn’t require me to shrink.

People who didn’t flinch at my honesty.

Moments where I could exhale without waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Home began to look less like a destination and more like a practice.

It showed up in boundaries I once felt guilty for setting.

In rest I once felt undeserving of.

In the quiet decision to leave spaces that no longer respected my becoming.

There were days home felt fragile.

Days I reached for old habits when loneliness crept in.

Days I questioned whether I was strong enough to hold myself.

But slowly, something shifted.

I noticed how my body responded when I honoured my needs.

How my mind felt clearer when I stopped forcing connections.

How peace began to feel familiar instead of foreign.

Home is where you are allowed to change.

Where growth is welcomed, not resented.

Where you don’t have to be the same version of yourself to be loved.

I started creating home in small, ordinary ways.

In the routines I kept.

In the music I played on quiet mornings.

In the way I spoke to myself when no one was listening.

I learned that home doesn’t always feel exciting.

Sometimes it feels steady.

Sometimes it feels still.

And that steadiness scared me at first.

I was so used to chaos that calm felt unfamiliar.

But unfamiliar didn’t mean wrong.

Home isn’t perfection.

It’s permission.

Permission to rest.

To feel deeply.

To take up space without apology.

It’s the place where you don’t have to perform or prove your worth.

Where you are enough simply because you exist.

I no longer search for home in people who cannot hold me.

I no longer stay where I have to disappear to belong.

Home is something I carry now.

Something I return to when the world feels heavy.

Something I build within myself, slowly and deliberately.

And maybe that’s the quiet truth no one tells you:

Home isn’t something you find.

It’s something you become.