We leave home with big dreams.
Suitcases full of clothes, but even heavier with expectation.
We go to new cities, new countries, new versions of ourselves. We tell ourselves we’re chasing opportunity, growth, a future that looks bigger than the one we left behind.
And sometimes we find it.
We build lives.
New apartments become “home.”
New routines settle in.
New people learn our favorite coffee order.
But every once in a while, something small breaks through.
A smell that reminds you of your childhood room.
A random afternoon where you wish your sibling would just walk in and annoy you.
The kind of hug that only exists with people who knew you before you became who you are now.
And suddenly you realize something strange.
You left home to find yourself.
But a part of you is still sitting exactly where you left it.
Time passes.
Two years. Four years. Ten years.
You go back sometimes. Holidays, weddings, quick visits squeezed between work and life. And when you walk through that door, something feels familiar… but also different.
Your room doesn’t quite feel like yours anymore.
The house feels smaller than you remember.
The version of you that lived there doesn’t exist the same way anymore either.
So where is home now?
Is it the place you grew up?
The city you built your life in?
The people who still know your old laugh?
Maybe home isn’t a fixed place we return to.
Maybe it’s something we carry quietly through every version of ourselves.
A mix of old memories, new streets, and the pieces of love that followed us wherever we went.
Maybe that’s why we keep searching.
Not because we’re lost.
But because home keeps evolving with us.
And maybe the real question isn’t when do we go back home?
Maybe the question is —
how many homes can a heart hold at once?
all my imperfects. 