I’m moving right now and it’s become obvious to me that there is a difference between this move and my last.

I am 26, I moved out at 18 and have now lived, in that time, in four different cities. This will the seventh place I have called my home in my adult life. 

Home has been a tricky concept in the best of times. I spent much of my childhood wishing to be anywhere else and I wanted to see my adult life redefine home in a way that I felt represented me the most.

The definition of what I was hoping for has been a goalpost I don’t understand and simply cannot grasp. I have struggled, I think, in finding that sense of home for as long as I can remember.

When I think of home, I realize it can and has become a supplement for the self.  Being 23 and moving out of my last place, I felt an intense amount of grief. I had, in part, felt that that space was the closest I had gotten to feeling at home and it had soured.

Unregulated roommate dynamics and the inconsistencies and reactivities of youth played a part both in the grief of the space lost but also who I believed I could be in my time there. This is where the goalpost moves, I couldn't seem to find myself anywhere. 

Home then, I guess is the space I can become as close to myself as I can get. Though much of my life I’ve viewed myself behind a pane of glass, at some point I dissolved through it and I am just me now. I'm not sure when it happened but I would be foolish to assume that space played no part.

Still, this home I am leaving, I do not feel that grief. First, because I am exactly who I’ve wanted to be and I no longer look for static circumstances to confirm that. Second, because I am excited for the change, to embark on this new environment with my good friends. 

Our time spent here, while impactful and enjoyable, is over. I do not feel the loss of myself or the space. Perhaps I have strengthened that self, or my relationship with grief, or both.

I have stopped looking for signs of home the way I would looking for gnats with a fine tooth comb and have instead found myself together searching for little at all. I am not observing my life or my self anymore, I am participating, I am in motion. In doing so, I have become quite comfortable with change as it has only validated my ability to exist as I am in different multitudes from moment to moment but also space to space.

There is a level of comfort I have had to develop in being uncomfortable, and despite being a very sensitive person, I am witnessing a significant drop in the gravity of the grief I am experiencing. I do not believe this is indicative of a reduced connection to the space but rather an increased sense of home in the self and the desire to be exactly where I am, regardless of where that might be. 

I do still feel the stresses of a move and the overwhelm and anxiety of being somewhere new with entirely new circumstances, challenges and unknowns. I do still look to my old space and try to remember exactly how it was two weeks ago, or three. 

I try to remember who I was when I arrived there; how I felt. I was newly graduated, scared. I am no longer a new grad but I am still scared. I was about to lose more people and I hadn’t known it yet. I had never picked up a paintbrush and enjoyed it. I had never written anything like this let alone shared it. 

I became closer to myself in this space, I dissolved through the glass. This space, this home, was a part of that, and I'm beyond thrilled to see what happens next.