Home.

This is for the people in my life who left their home and went to mine. To the relatives who I failed to show enough empathy to towards missing what is familiar, to missing their own homes. Who moved for better (or for worse) and I failed to see why they couldn’t see my home as theirs.

Exactly 10 months have passed since I moved across the world, leaving behind everyone and everything that encompasses what I call my home. And to those relatives – I get it. I do and I am sorry. The comparisons are just the adjusting to a new, different norm. Yes, the small things do become a big deal, the cucumbers, the pavements, the street signs, the tomatoes – yes they do taste different – they look different too. And you do mentally note that.

There are these really conflicting feelings. No one tells you about them. Those moments of wanting to go home but at the same time, wanting to be exactly where you are – because it’s what feels right.

And then, ridiculously, you find yourself crying at the bank, over a simple form, over a difference in a word – a noun – a noun that somehow means something so different. That feeling of frustration – it just overcomes you, and you fight back the tears, those stupid tears… and you feel alien, isolated. How can you be speaking the same language and feel completely and utterly misunderstood? Walking through the streets there is this neon sign on your forehead that tells them you don’t belong.

But then there are the people. The people who are just there- who make their home yours. The people who become your family whilst yours are afar.

Suddenly, or so it feels like it, you’re walking down the streets and they’re now your streets, your local supermarket, your manicure parlour. That neon light – it starts to dim. The us and them becomes just us.

And yet, despite your best efforts to bring it with you – or to make a new one, part of your home will always be somewhere else… and there will never be any place like it…