I have nowhere to call Home

Bird house

If home is where we feel safe,

And I have no home,

Where do I go ?

Finding my own safe place

Hello, hello,

I’m back after a long break. It wasn’t intentional—I have a lot to say, and many drafts in my “to write” list, but it’s been hard. Since I last wrote, I had to leave Sweden. I ran out of money, and my Swedish skills weren’t sufficient to find a job. I was too stressed, so I thought it would be more responsible to return to France and work on a long-term plan. However, I realised that ‘going back to France’ did not feel like ‘going home’.

I am back in the region where I spent my teenage years, where my mom and friends live. Yet, I can’t help but feel that this is not home to me. But then, I don’t have anywhere else I could call home either. So now I wonder how to build this safe place. Do I need to choose a meaningful place, settle down, and strengthen my social circle?

What is Home ?

“Home: the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.”

This is the official definition, but I don’t like it; it feels too restrictive.

To me, home is:

“The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

To some, it will be a place, it doesn’t even have to be a house. To others, it will be a person or their family.

I have lived in many places

I was born in the North of France, where I grew up among my entire family until middle school. Most of my extended family and one of my sisters still live there. My parents and I moved to the middle-West of France during my teenage years where my mom still lives, along with many of my friends.

For my bachelor’s degree, I lived in the South of England and in Scotland. Since 2017, when I finished my studies, I had to move out of the UK because of Brexit. Since then, I’ve alternated between living in the North and the West of France.

But now, after four months of trying to settle in Sweden, I’ve come back to where my mom and friends are. Despite my memories of growing up here and having people I love nearby, I don’t feel like I’ve “come home.”

Time to face my issues

I keep running away

My issue is that I have a tendency to run away. Running away from uncertainty, running towards adventure and the unknown, trying to find somewhere I belong—elsewhere. I’ve traveled and moved around, looking for that place to call home, where I could live according to my values and lifestyle. I’ve looked so hard, so often, that I now feel discouraged. Right now, I feel like I don’t belong anywhere.

I know it’s time to stop searching, at least for a while. I need to try to settle down, build the life I long for with financial stability, a place to live, and friends to hang out with. Maybe start new hobbies, like yoga or art classes. I have a theory that, regardless of the actual place, home is the life I could build, aligned with my aspirations and values. It’s about the people I could meet and create relationships with. I could still go on adventures during holidays, discovering new places and cultures, and revisiting countries I love.

Why, anxiety ? Why ?

But even now, with this new plan, I keep finding myself thinking about moving to another region in France or how much I’d love to live in Edinburgh or wishing I had stayed in Sweden…

Now that finding a job and a place to live is becoming more real, I’m getting more anxious, and doubts about this plan are creeping in. So, I need to suck it up and persevere. I need to remind myself that I won’t be happier somewhere else. I need to realise that living somewhere “boring” or “not exotic” doesn’t mean I’ve failed or that I should be ashamed of being “common.” Where I live doesn’t define me, and where I work doesn’t define me either—but that’s for another article!

I never felt like I belonged in France, and I never felt like I belonged among my peers since primary school. Being an introvert meant I didn’t hang out with many friends or try to make new ones during my teenage years, or even during my bachelor’s degree.

When I moved to the UK through an exchange program (Erasmus), I was put into a group of people my age from all over the globe, united by our desire to discover a new country and experience.

During this exchange, I felt part of something, with people I belonged with, in a country I loved. It was after I had to leave and come back to France that my depression kicked in, and everything went wrong.

Life became so hard. I haven’t felt as happy as I did then for the last eight years. Six were spent deeply depressed, and the last two felt like I’m in stasis.

Now what ?

All of this to say: I’m going to try and see if, for once, staying where I am and trying to settle where I live today, no matter my affinity with the region and country, will help me create my home.

My current goals are to have my own place and make it my safe haven with things that bring me peace and joy. To me, this includes a self-made built-in library stacked full of books, a garden, a sewing/arts room, and the whole place lightly decorated with lots of plants to help with my anxiety. I want to have a routine—sadly, working most of the time because money—but the rest of the time will be 80% introvert time, where I can be alone at home with my dog or walking in nature, and 20% for social activities, and maybe, sometimes, going out with friends.

Technically, I can have this anywhere. So, it seems like a good idea to try and do it where I am right now. I just need to accept that I’ll have to stay in France for the time being. It doesn’t mean I’ll never move abroad; it just means that while I can’t today, I can still make a home with what I can actually have.

“Home is not a place… it’s a feeling.”

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