As I board the red-eye from Vancouver to Washington D.C. and settle into my seat, my neighbour smiles and asks,
“Are you leaving home or going back home?”
Caught off guard, I pause—still struggling to accept that five years of calling Vancouver "home" came to an end four months ago.
Unsure how to answer, my mind replayed the passport control officer’s words at a border still unfamiliar to me, from just a few weeks ago, as I entered Washington D.C.:
“Welcome home.” (Words that remain foreign to me 12,000 kilometers away in my country of birth).
I finally smile back and reply to the fellow traveller,
“Going home for the next two years, I guess.”
But where, or what, is home?
“Home is the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” Permanent. Familiar. Certain.
But for some of us, home isn’t something we live in. It’s something we live toward.
Not a place, but a promise. A future.
A reward waiting once you’ve done your time in the limbo of transition. It’s always just around the corner. In two years. After the next job. Once you’ve “settled.”
But what if it never comes?
After living in 17 residences across 6 countries, including dorms, you’d think I’d have figured out what home really means by now. Ironically, it’s a question that remains difficult to answer.
I used to believe that home was where you built community, where you memorized the bus routes, and where the restaurant staff greeted you by name and already knew your usual order.
Laying down your roots or foundation in a world that is constantly shifting, never still, and never truly yours. Transient. Belonging. Becoming.
That is why I propose that there is no stable home. It’s a made-up concept.
A story we tell ourselves to endure the spaces we don’t belong to yet, or don’t belong to anymore, to convince ourselves that we’re not just drifting from one obligation to the next. Does it mask the fact that everything is rented: time, place, relationships, even identity?
We pack up cities like suitcases. We learn to leave before we get too comfortable.
And then, ironically, we mourn the loss of something we never fully allowed ourselves to claim.
So maybe home isn’t where the heart is. Maybe it’s where the heart used to be. Before it had to adapt, before it had to let go, again and again.
And if that’s the case, then home isn’t a real place.
It is an ephemeral anchor.
A weighted shadow trailing you from airport to airport, reminding you what once was, and what will likely never be again.
And yet, we still search for it.
Because to admit there is no home is to admit that humans are fundamentally untethered.
And that kind of truth is hard to live with for most.