SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HOME

There is a version of adulthood we’re taught to work toward.

Find someone. Build a career. Get married. Buy a house. Have kids. Pick a place. Stay there.

And then, eventually, you’ve made it.

The strange thing is, I don’t think I ever really wanted that life.

Some parts of the traditional version were never going to fit me anyway. I’m a lesbian, so marrying a man was never something I wanted. I’ve never been particularly religious. If I had to describe myself, I’d probably say I’m somewhere between agnostic and spiritual. And I’ve known for a long time that I don’t want children.

But relationships were different.

For most of my twenties, there was almost always someone. Someone I was dating, someone I loved, someone I was getting over, or someone I was imagining a future with.

Without realizing it, I got used to building versions of my future that already had another person written into them.

Where would we live?

What would we do?

What would our life look like?

And when those relationships ended, I wasn’t only losing a person. I was losing the future I had imagined around them.

But there’s something else I don’t think I understood then.

Some of the loneliest I’ve ever felt has been while I was in a relationship.

Having someone doesn’t mean you feel understood

We talk about loneliness as if it is caused by the absence of people.

I don’t think that’s true.

You can sleep next to someone every night and feel lonely.

You can love someone and feel lonely.

You can have someone asking how your day went and still feel like there are entire parts of you they don’t really understand.

Sometimes I think that’s a worse kind of loneliness than actually being alone.

When I’m by myself, at least the silence makes sense.

There isn’t someone sitting right beside me making me wonder why I still feel unseen.

Maybe that’s part of why I’ve become so comfortable with my own company.

I’ve always felt a little different from most people. Not in some I’m more special than everyone else way. Half the time I don’t even know how to explain what I mean.

I just don’t always understand people.

I like humanity in the abstract more than I like people in practice.

I can look at the world and feel enormous empathy for people I’ve never met. I care about what happens to them. I care about fairness. I care about people being able to live however they want as long as they’re not hurting anyone.

And then I interact with actual human beings and think, Jesus fucking Christ.

The way people judge each other. The things they care about. The rules they invent and then insist everyone else follow. The cruelty people are capable of over religion, sexuality, nationality, politics, money, appearances, lifestyles, or simply somebody making a choice they wouldn’t make themselves.

Sometimes people exhaust me.

Sometimes they disappoint me.

Sometimes I genuinely don’t understand the way other people think.

And sometimes I feel much more peaceful when I’m alone.

Maybe I don’t need more people. Maybe I need the right ones.

But I don’t think that means I don’t want connection.

Because every once in a while, I meet someone who makes me realize exactly what I’ve been missing.

My best friend lives in Portugal.

Our friendship has always been long distance, which should theoretically make us less close. Somehow, she’s one of the people I feel closest to in the world.

I don’t feel like I have to perform around her.

I don’t have to make myself more social, more interesting, more normal, more anything.

I can just exist.

We can talk about everything. We can say completely unhinged shit to each other. We can have serious conversations about life and then send each other something stupid five minutes later. And I know that if we lived close enough to spend ordinary days together, we wouldn’t constantly need to entertain each other.

We could go somewhere together and talk for hours.

Or we could sit in the same room and barely speak.

Neither one of us would have to wonder if something was wrong.

There’s something incredibly intimate about being able to be quiet with another person.

Not awkward silence.

Not angry silence.

Just two people existing next to each other without requiring anything from one another.

I think that’s the kind of connection I actually want.

She doesn’t want the traditional life either. She’s independent. She wants to travel. She doesn’t want children. Marriage isn’t some finish line she’s racing toward. Religion doesn’t dictate how she believes she’s supposed to live.

We don’t agree on absolutely everything, and I wouldn’t want us to.

But there is something incredibly comforting about meeting another person and realizing, Oh. You see it too.

Sometimes I wish I had more people like her in my life.

Not more people for the sake of having more people.

More people I can be completely myself around.

Maybe that’s the difference.

I spent enough time trying to belong

For most of my life, I’ve had some version of the feeling that I don’t quite belong anywhere.

Different country. Different culture. Different sexuality. Different way of looking at life.

Sometimes even when I technically belong somewhere, I still don’t feel like I do.

For years, I think I treated that as a problem I needed to solve.

Maybe I needed the right relationship.

The right group of friends.

The right job.

The right city.

The right version of myself.

Maybe eventually I’d arrive somewhere and think, There. These are my people. This is where I fit.

I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve been asking the wrong question.

Maybe I don’t need to find somewhere I perfectly belong.

Maybe I need to build a life where belonging isn’t a requirement for being happy.

A life where I can love people without needing to become like them.

Where I can care about humanity without pretending I enjoy being around everyone.

Where I can have a few extraordinary relationships instead of collecting dozens of mediocre ones.

Where I can leave places that no longer fit me.

Where I can be alone without interpreting that as evidence that something is missing.

And where the people I do let close to me are people around whom I don’t have to shrink, translate, explain or perform.

Maybe home isn’t always a place.

Maybe sometimes it’s the rare person who makes you feel like you don’t have to be anybody else.

And maybe sometimes it’s yourself.

What if my life gets to be about me?

There’s something almost uncomfortable about saying that.

I want my life to be about me.

We’re taught that eventually our lives are supposed to become about something else. A marriage. Children. A family. Faith. Something bigger than ourselves.

And those can all create beautiful, meaningful lives.

But they aren’t the only way to create one.

I don’t want children.

I’m not convinced I want marriage.

I don’t need religion to tell me what my life is for.

So what if I get to decide?

What if I spend my life learning?

What if I build a career I’m genuinely proud of?

What if I become financially independent enough that my choices aren’t constantly dictated by money?

What if I travel?

What if I live in another country someday?

Or five?

What if I learn another language badly, get lost in cities I’ve never seen before, make friends whose lives look nothing like mine, take opportunities I can’t even imagine yet, and keep becoming versions of myself I haven’t met?

Maybe a life centered around yourself isn’t automatically a selfish one.

Maybe the point of my life isn’t to build it around someone else. Maybe, for once, I get to build it around myself.

I don’t want my world to get smaller

I’m almost 30.

Thirty has a funny way of making people talk about permanence.

Who are you dating?

Do you want to get married?

Are you going to have kids?

Where are you going to live?

What’s the plan?

It’s as if eventually you’re supposed to stop exploring and start deciding.

Choose the person.

Choose the city.

Choose the career.

Choose the life.

Then settle down.

But I’m approaching 30 and feeling almost the opposite.

I don’t want my world to get smaller. I want it to get bigger.

There are too many places I haven’t seen.

Too many things I haven’t tried.

Too many things I don’t know.

Too many versions of myself I haven’t had the chance to become.

I spent enough of my life feeling like there were things I couldn’t do and places I couldn’t go.

Now that my world finally feels open, why would I rush to decide where it ends?

Maybe success is freedom

I want to be successful.

But success, to me, is becoming less about what I can accumulate and more about what I can choose.

I want a career that lets me travel.

I want to support myself well enough that fear doesn’t make my decisions for me.

I want to wake up one day and decide to spend a month somewhere else.

I want to be able to accept an opportunity in another country.

I want to challenge myself and discover what I’m capable of.

I want to see places that right now are only names on a map.

Maybe success, to me, is having enough freedom to keep choosing my life.

Not choosing it once.

Choosing it again and again.

I don’t need another version of the same blueprint

Realizing I was a lesbian already meant accepting that one version of the traditional life was never going to be mine.

But being gay doesn’t mean I have to recreate the same blueprint with a woman.

I don’t have to find a wife, buy a house, get a dog and recreate the traditional family with two women instead of a man and a woman.

Maybe I want that someday.

Maybe I don’t.

The important part is that I get to ask.

The same goes for religion. Motherhood. Where I live. What my career looks like. How many people I keep close to me. What makes my life meaningful.

Some people find meaning in raising children.

Some find it in marriage.

Some find it in faith.

Maybe I find mine in curiosity.

In freedom.

In friendship.

In seeing the world.

In creating things.

In the handful of people who make me feel understood.

In learning to enjoy my own company.

In becoming someone my younger self couldn’t have imagined and be proud of.

What exactly would be missing?

Sometimes I imagine myself at 50.

Maybe I’ve lived in four countries.

I’ve built a career I’m proud of. I’ve seen places that right now exist only in pictures. I’ve made friends in different parts of the world. I’ve taken risks. I’ve created things. I’ve collected stories.

Maybe I’ve fallen in love again.

Maybe more than once.

Maybe there’s a woman beside me.

Maybe there isn’t.

Maybe I have one home.

Maybe I have several.

Maybe my best friend and I are still sending each other stupid shit from opposite sides of the world.

Maybe I’ll settle down someday. Maybe I’ll get married. Maybe I’ll find a place so beautiful that, for once, I won’t want to know what’s next.

Or maybe I won’t.

Maybe I change my mind about all of it.

Except children. I’m pretty fucking confident about that one.

Maybe I’ll keep moving. Keep learning. Keep meeting the rare people who make this enormous world feel a little less lonely. Maybe I’ll build a life across cities and countries, with no traditional family structure of my own and no permanent address I’m determined to die in.

I don’t know.

And I think I’ve finally stopped seeing that as a problem.

For so much of our lives, we’re asked to make decisions for people we haven’t become yet.

What do you want to be?

Who do you want to marry?

Do you want children?

Where do you want to live?

Where are you going to settle down?

What’s the plan?

We’re supposed to answer those questions and then spend the rest of our lives becoming the person who gave those answers.

But I don’t want to make permanent decisions for a woman I haven’t met yet.

I want to leave her options.

I want her to be able to fall in love if she wants to. Leave if she needs to. Move across the world because something there calls to her. Start over at 35. Change careers at 42. Come home at 50. Find another home at 51.

I want her to still be curious.

I want her to be allowed to change her mind.

I want her life to still surprise her.

Maybe that’s what freedom means to me.

Not avoiding commitment. Not refusing to love anyone. Not running away from anything.

Just knowing that the life I’m living is one I chose.

And I think that’s where the question becomes bigger than whether I ever get married or settle down.

Because if nobody had ever told you what a successful life was supposed to look like, what would you actually do with yours?

Forget what’s practical for a second.

Forget what would make your parents proud.

Forget what your friends are doing.

Forget what someone your age is “supposed” to have figured out by now.

Forget the version of adulthood you’ve watched other people live your entire life.

If nobody else got a vote, what would you actually want?

Would you still want to marry?

Would you still want children?

Would you still want the career you’re chasing?

Would you still live where you live?

Would you still be working so hard to become the person you’re trying to become?

Maybe the answer is yes.

Maybe you would marry the person you love, have children, buy a house ten minutes from where you grew up and stay there for the rest of your life.

There’s nothing small about that if it’s the life you genuinely chose.

But how often do we stop long enough to make sure that we did?

How many of your dreams are actually yours?

How many came from your parents?

Your culture?

Your religion?

The people around you?

The fear of disappointing someone?

The fear of being alone?

The fear that if your life looks different from everyone else’s, people might assume something went wrong?

How many things have you wanted for so long that you’ve never stopped to ask whether you still want them?

And if you stripped all of that away, who would you be?

Where would you go?

Who would you love?

What would you learn?

What would you create?

What would you leave behind?

What would you finally admit you never wanted in the first place?

Maybe you’d realize that the life you’re already living is exactly the one you would choose again.

But maybe you wouldn’t.

Maybe you’d buy the ticket.

Maybe you’d go back to school.

Maybe you’d start the thing you’ve been talking yourself out of for years.

Maybe you’d leave something that stopped making you happy a long time ago.

Maybe you’d stop waiting for a relationship to make you feel complete.

Maybe you’d move somewhere nobody knows your name.

Maybe you’d stop trying so hard to belong somewhere that requires you to become less of yourself in order to fit.

Who would you become if you stopped trying to be someone other people could understand?

And what would it cost you if you never found out?

How many places would you never see?

How many things would you never try?

How many people would you never meet?

How many versions of yourself would you never get to know?

How much of yourself are you willing to trade for belonging?

How much freedom are you willing to trade for approval?

How many years of your life are you willing to spend making choices you don’t want just because other people understand them?

That’s what scares me now.

Not being single.

Not being different.

Not knowing where I’ll live ten years from now.

Not knowing whether I’ll ever get married.

What scares me is something much simpler.

Reaching the end of my life and realizing I knew what I wanted, but I was too afraid to choose it.

Because there will always be another reason to wait.

Until you have more money.

Until you’re more successful.

Until someone comes with you.

Until your family understands.

Until you’re less afraid.

Until you’re certain.

Until the timing is right.

And maybe one day you look up and realize that all those years you thought you were waiting for your life to begin…

were your life.

So maybe the question isn’t whether you want to settle down.

Maybe it’s whether you’re choosing your life, or slowly becoming comfortable inside one you never consciously chose.

Maybe I’ll get married someday. Maybe I won’t.

Maybe I’ll live in one place for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll live in ten.

Maybe I’ll find somewhere I finally feel like I completely belong.

Maybe I never will.

But I don’t think I need to know anymore.

I spent enough of my life thinking there was somewhere I was eventually supposed to arrive. The right place. The right person. The right career. The right version of myself.

Now I think I’d rather leave some of it unanswered.

I want to see what happens.

I want to see who I become.

I want to see as much of this world as it will let me.

And if I get to the end of my life having loved a few people deeply, found a few places that felt like home, collected more stories than things, changed my mind when I needed to, and built a life that made sense to me even when it didn’t make sense to anyone else…

what exactly would be missing?

Maybe nothing.

So if you could do anything with your one life, what would you do?

Not someday.

Not when everything finally falls into place.

Not the life you’re supposed to want.

Yours.

What would it look like?

And if it looks nothing like the life you’re living now…

what are you waiting for?