Home pt. I

I have spent the past five months trying to figure out how to live life alone.

I have spent the past five months learning what it means to be independent, even when I don’t want to be, because I simply don’t have a choice. I have spent the past five months wrestling with the idea of “home” and what exactly that means in my life during this transitional period of young twenty-something adulthood. I have come to the conclusion that I truly do not do well alone. And this is unsettling.

For the past five months, I have probably spent more time alone than I ever have in my life, and I have hated it. For me, home is often associated with comfort and safety. If someone or something makes me feel safe or truly comfortable, I begin to think of them or it as home. To be completely honest, I don’t always know how to cope without some sort of safety net.

To me, home has always meant people and places. More specifically, home is my little island of Coronado and my physical house in this paradise. Home is laughing so hard I cry with my best girl pals. Home is receiving a warm hug. Home is screaming songs at the top of my lungs out of a car window as the summer wind races by and tangles my hair. Home is hearing “I’m proud of you.” Home is rainy weather putting me to sleep as blankets cuddle me on the couch. Home is a bowl of Aunty's curry. Home is listening to his heartbeat with his arms wrapped around me. Home is purple polka dot bed sheets preceded by the words “Sleep well.” Home is the beach on a sunny day. Home is being surrounded by community.

But for some reason, home has never meant just me. Home and the things I associate with comfort are always outside of myself, because being alone is not comfortable.

I find myself in people and places and even certain circumstances, but I am not myself "home." This is not to say I am insecure about who I am. However, I do not put Michaela into the list of things I consider to be comfortable.

My time in LA during part of these past five months is still an experience I need to fully process, though that will probably not happen for quite some time. In the meantime, I am left with a lot of questions, especially about what it means to find comfort in the unknown. I spent my time in LA trying to figure out what home meant without all of the physical things around me that I associated such a concept. As I have mentioned, it looked a lot like learning how to find comfort within myself, and my relationship with the Lord, when I was alone. Now that I am physically home again, and I begin to process those experiences, I have found that I do not always understand myself.

If I turn to myself to find home as I work to fully comprehend my time in LA, I am afraid of the questions that I am going to ask, and of the answers I may consequently find. I am afraid of having to work through newly realized realities. I am afraid people are going to tell me I am wrong. I am afraid I will end up not feeling like myself at all, and I am afraid that I will somehow lose the people I care most about in the process. And as I already stated, I am not good at being alone.

Now, more than ever before, I am beginning to understand how important it is for me to view Michaela as home. I am constantly changing, as we all are, and change can be unsettling. But there is still comfort to be found in the change. There is comfort to be found in tension and growth. There is comfort in finding home within instead of without. Because, though I am going to change as well, life itself will change even more. The only constant in that chaotic shifting will be myself, and the roots I have firmly planted in the Lord.

In the words of Rupi Kaur, “It was when I stopped searching for home in others and lifted the foundations of home within myself, I found there were no roots more intimate than those between a mind and body that have decided to be whole.”

(To be continued...)