Always moving, never arrived
Making home for myself, in myself, by myself
In a distracted three-hour FaceTime call with my mom, I recently proclaimed myself the “queen of packing.” Ironically, I said this while forcing my full weight onto the cover of my suitcase to get it to close.
I open and close that green suitcase no less than 20 times every year. Between trips to campus, weekend train rides up and down the East Coast, long-haul flights to distant parts of the world, and the annoying seasonal clothes-swap I have to do every winter (taking my summer clothes back to Florida and bringing my coats from the closet at home), that suitcase is, without doubt, the most valuable investment I’ve ever made.
Since arriving at college, I’ve racked up over 70,000 American Airlines loyalty miles. I can get through baggage drop and TSA in under 35 minutes (without using TSA PreCheck), and I’ve visited 21 cities across 13 countries.
But this is not a brag. In fact, I’m a bit tired of living out of a suitcase.
You’d think, drawing ancient wisdom from some distant vestige of Anthony Bourdain’s spirit (may his soul rest in peace), that all this travel would have resulted in a clearer sense of who I am, what I want to do, how the world works, and how similar all humanity really is.
And honestly, a quick breeze through the half-scribbled entries of my travel journal would suggest that yes, I’ve learned a lot about all these things. But at the same time, I’ve come to uncomfortable terms with the fact that no matter how far I go, I cannot escape myself.
The truth is, I used to think arrival was a place. A landing point. That if I just got to the next city, the next program, the next stage of life, I’d find something that felt like me. In other words, that the right geography would unlock a version of me who finally felt certain, still, and sure.
But the more I’ve moved, the more it’s started to feel like I’m chasing ghosts of myself, versions I thought would exist somewhere else. I’ve been welcomed and well-fed in homes around the world, laughed with strangers who became friends overnight, and stared down from viewpoints in awe. And still, I often feel just outside of it all. Close, but not quite. Like I’ve somehow packed my body but forgotten to bring the part of me that knows how to belong.
I often think about Ifemelu in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, who leaves Nigeria full of dreams and expectation, but whose arrival in America doesn’t bring the clarity she hoped for. She moves through cities, friendships, jobs, salons, classrooms, and still, there’s a deep ache for something she can’t name. When she returns to Lagos years later, she says it’s as if “she had come back to be an outsider again.” That line lingers within me. The realization that even home can feel foreign once you’ve been away too long.
That’s the illusion of travel no one warns you about: not that arrival is hard, but that sometimes you don’t arrive at all. Sometimes the airport isn’t followed by answers. Sometimes the new apartment, new friends, new language, new lover doesn’t fix the ache. You’re still you, just in another place.
What I’m starting to understand is that maybe I’ve been trying to find something outside of myself that I was always meant to build within.
I’ve spent years looking for home in people, in cities, in plans that keep shifting. I’ve tried to land in places I never intended to stay, hoping the arrival would fix what felt untethered. But it hasn’t. Not really. And the longer I do this, the more I realize that I cannot keep outsourcing my sense of belonging.
I have to become the place I want to come home to.
So I’m learning to build a home within myself. Slowly. Imperfectly. A home with space for joy and disappointment, for clarity and confusion. I’m learning to decorate it with softness, to hang memories like framed photos, to dust off parts of myself I left boxed up in the attic of my own mind. I want to polish it, cherish it, sit down in it, and stay a while.
It’s hard. Some days, I still find myself looking for other people to house me, to tell me who I am, to reflect back some image of myself I can hold onto. But when I get quiet, I know what I’m building is real. And it’s mine.
Truth be told, I’m not done moving. I probably never will be. The flights will keep coming, that damn green suitcase will keep opening and closing. But now, I’m trying to pack a little differently. Not just clothes and chargers and journals, but intention. Slowness. A version of myself that feels less like she’s on the run and more like she knows where she belongs.
I’m not sure where I’m going next. But for the first time (ever) I’m more interested in who I’ll be when I get there, and whether I’ll recognize myself when I look in the mirror.
I haven’t arrived just yet. But I’ve started to stay.
i love this sm!!