Christmas Eve, 2009. I was seven years old, and it was, of course, my favourite time of the year. Our house would come alive with old-fashioned red and gold decorations, massive family gatherings, and the glittering footsteps of Santa Claus by the fireplace, footsteps I now know were my father’s. Every year, we’d watch The Nightmare Before Christmas together, leave a glass of whiskey (which magically disappeared by sunrise) and carrots for Rudolph. It really was the most magical time of the year. 

Until 2009. 

I can still remember that morning reasonably well, though it feels more like fragments pieced together than a coherent memory. I was sitting on the same sofa where we had shared six Christmases, surrounded by the same decorations, when my father sat me down and told me he and my mother were separating. I remember my eyes clouding with tears, confused, waiting for him to laugh and say it was a joke. Looking back, I wonder why he didn’t wait until after the holiday, why he didn’t spare us that last Christmas together. But I think now that he just couldn’t bear any more lying. 

For the next thirteen years, my life was split between two homes, Mondays and Tuesdays with Dad, Wednesdays and Thursdays with Mum, switching every weekend like clockwork, as it had been ruled in court. I had two rooms, two wardrobes, two toothbrushes, and two separate lives. I know I’m lucky; I had two parents who loved me. But growing up with no single place to call my own left me feeling somewhat restless. I’d watch friends with their perfectly organised lives, where everything they needed was in one place, their clothes, schoolbooks, their family under one roof and I’d envy them. Whenever I lost something, my mum would say, “Well, it must be somewhere!” But for me, it could have been miles away. 

After college, I turned to the one thing that i'd always wanted to try: travel. I booked a flight to Sri Lanka, bought a backpack, and picked a volunteering project. I didn’t just want to party through Thailand and drink my way through alcohol buckets (though I certainly did occasionally). I wanted something deeper. My mother and grandmother both cried as they dropped me off at the airport. I felt a knot in my stomach as I walked through the gates alone, but I pushed it down and boarded the flight, wondering if I was making a mistake.

What was meant to be four weeks in one country turned into six months of backpacking. In Sri Lanka, my original destination, I met the most beautiful souls, people who made me feel somewhat at home in a strange place. From there, with the friends i'd made, I backpacked through Thailand and Indonesia, sleeping in crowded hostels, some decent and some disgusting. The landscapes changed and there were new people every day, but I had never felt more content. In Borneo, alone, I volunteered at an orangutan sanctuary, amongst the jungle, isolated. In Australia, I reunited with the friends I’d made at the start of my journey. We got a live-in van and drove down the East Coast, visiting beaches, sleeping on boats, jumping out of planes and filling our time with a lot of conversations. 

Eventually, I had to come home. My passport was expiring, and I knew I couldn’t stay forever, life was carrying on at home and my pockets were getting emptier. When I got in the car at London Heathrow, that familiar sense of unease returned, the same feeling I’d get when one of my parents dropped me off at the other’s house. The discomfort of having to readjust, not knowing where I truly belonged. 

It was great to see my family and friends again, to be able to hold them. But being back in that same town I’d grown up in felt odd. It took me some time to get used to being back. Once again, I had found myself in the same four walls, well in my case, eight, wondering why it didn’t quite feel right. 

A month later, I found another way to stop myself from putting down roots. I took a job in the city that had me travelling across the country for weeks on end. It kept me moving, and for a while, I loved it. The work was exhausting, but I found friendship, and it was a good experience. I met someone, I found real love, though now it’s long distance, 230 miles to be exact, adding more to my confusion of where to call home. 

After a year, I decided to make another change and focus on a career I felt passionate about, writing. And now, as I sit in one of my childhood bedrooms, writing this, I’ve come to realize something important: this feeling of “home” that I’ve been chasing my whole life has never been a single place. It’s me. 

For some, home is a house with four walls, a family, and a front door they can always return to. For me, home is more like footnotes in a book that I can flick through. It’s in the people who grew up beside me, and those that watched me grow, places I’ve been, and the love I carry for those both near and far.  

My home isn’t either of those two houses from my childhood, but the people who reside in them, the love that I hold in my heart for my friends and family, and the man that holds it, 230 miles away. 

And even if all of that were to fall apart, I know now that I still have a home. I have a home in me, and that's forever.