No Place Like Home

Where is it you go back to?

When all the places you have ever been are placeholders and just pretend.

No place you would ever want to call home.

Plenty of houses, so many rooms, yet not a spot to call your own.

Food in the cabinets but you’re cooking in a kitchenette.

You may have a place to sit, but you’re always on the ready defense.

Your bags are packed and ready to run

There’s never any resting or fun.

You find hollowed-out spaces to hide, placing your comfort objects inside.

Maybe you could be happy in this place, or maybe you’ll be gone again without a trace.

K.B. Silver

My last move in Sept of 2022 put me into home number 14. As a child, I was very good at lying to myself. I thought I was fine with moving, I told myself, and everyone else I liked it and enjoyed meeting people all across the country. That was a lie. I am actually very socially awkward, and not neurotypical, Something my family largely ignored and told me to get over. We lived in the Midwest, and on both coasts. At first, it was true, we moved around our local area, and I got to make new friends and keep the ones I already had. Then when I was a teenager, and we moved halfway across the country, to Florida, it was horrible. I didn’t feel like I could change my tune though. Eventually, I started letting everyone know how much I disliked living in Florida, and not necessarily because of that, we eventually moved again. At that time all the way across the country to California. Even though we had moved to a much “better” place, adjusting wasn’t much easier. I made some friends, but It was at least as difficult in CA as it had been in Fl making friends. The older we get, the more difficult it is to move around and just slip into a new social ecosystem. Now I never feel settled, I am both unreasonably attached to certain items, and I have no attachments to almost everything else. I could walk away from 99% of the things in my home today, and never look back. I am constantly vigilant for the next reason to pick up and move on. There doesn’t even need to be a reason, because my parents didn’t always give us one. Panic is the reason, it probably always was. panic chased my family around the country, and it continues to chase me today.