HOME I’ve never felt at home anywhere. Always out of place, always left on the side of the street holding a sign that says, lost my home, please help me find it. And I think maybe that’s part of the problem that I’ve been searching for people to help me find home, asking people to lead me to home. And they do. They bring me home, but to their home. They bring me to where they feel comfortable, to where they feel at home, and I sit there and watch them glide around their space like it was built just for them, enjoying every moment. And I think, yes, I like this. I like this home. I want to make it mine. But that’s where the roadblock is. Because I can’t make someone else’s home mine. It doesn’t work like that. A home is built for you. You fill it with things that make you feel whole, comfortable things that bring you joy, peace, and a sense of ownership in a world that rips everything else away from you. You cannot force a triangle block into a hole built for a square. And that’s what I feel like I’ve been doing my whole life: trying to fit into holes and spaces that were never designed for me, just to feel a sense of belonging. So I cut myself down. I tell myself that if I could just fit then it would be okay even if pieces of me are gone at least I’d have a place I could call home. But it doesn’t work like that. Cutting myself to fit into that hole only makes me bleed on people who didn’t deserve it. People who already called that place their home— now it’s contaminated, polluted, because I tried to make it mine. And now I’m back where I started, pieces of me cut down and trimmed, parts of me I carry without knowing if they’re just dead weight or if one day I can put them back and be whole again. I want a home. I’ve wanted nothing more. I thought I could find that. I thought I could be that for myself. But I can’t. I can’t, because I’m outside everyone’s house picking up the trash they don’t want in their home, just to keep the street clean. People-pleasing, because they know I’m out here. They know I’ll always be out here because I don’t have a home. I’ve built myself up. I’ve taken every bruise, every trauma, every exhausting moment, and I’ve still kept putting one foot in front of the other. No one sees the bruises, because on the outside they’ve healed. But on the inside, they’re still bleeding salt. And I’m trying to heal them, trying to drain the blood before I drown in it. I don’t know why home is so difficult to find. Why the home I was born into no longer fits the shape I’ve become. What’s the purpose of having a home if you’re just going to outgrow it? It feels like every time I find a shoulder to lean on, I outgrow them. We stop fitting. I’m tired of outgrowing my homes. I’m tired of not being enough just this once I want a home that doesn’t shrink every time I finally start to breathe. I want a home that can grow and bend with me a home that i can finally call HOME.