(Un)Making a Home

Familiarity is comfortable and change, no matter what it looks like, is unbearably hard.

Earlier this month, I said goodbye to an apartment I loved deeply, a safe space that was home to me for longer than any other place before it. (And look at that light!) This is the first place that I settled into and made my own. I celebrated my 30th birthday here. It was my cats’ first home, and where I honed my artistic style. While living in this apartment, I made friendships that will last a lifetime; I found my center and my self worth. This space saw me through the pandemic, through anguish and big joys, and I grew more here in the past five years than in all the years prior.

Before leaving, I worked for days alongside my mom and best friend, running on adrenaline, sorting through and clearing out a literal decades’ worth of things. We scrubbed and painted. We sold my car.

I kept little, but I’m grateful that so many of my things, curated with love, now live in my friends’ and family’s homes.

When the space was empty, we drove to the airport with my two cats. And after 14+ hours of travel, my mom and I arrived at in Cologne, Germany, and I was reunited with my husband.

My mom went home yesterday. It’s been a little over a week since we left Baltimore, and I am still acclimating to the time difference and processing all the change that’s happened and all the change to come.

And yes, while I’m thrilled to finally be here, it has also been immeasurably hard. But we are resilient, even when things are uncertain, even when we take a big leap outside of what is familiar. And through all this change, I’ll learn that home is anywhere there’s a sense of belonging — and vice versa.