# Homebound By [hexe](https://paragraph.com/@hexe) · 2022-04-23 --- I want to talk about the concept of _home_, and what it means to me. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about home. Where is home? What is home? And why does it hurt so much that I don’t have the answer to these questions? And what does it have to do with my sense of self? ![Funny, the place I most felt like home was while camping.](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/cad800d22ec95d63cc1164b3c9bb7b91ab86a4f0b9c08fff5e4a3455fa52509d.jpg) Funny, the place I most felt like home was while camping. Well, so far my life hasn’t been exactly conventional. That’s not a bad thing, I don’t really yearn for another life, but it has its ups and downs. The reason my life hasn’t been conventional is because of the increased mobility of modern life, in fact the kind of life I had might slowly become the norm. I was born in Turkey, into a Turkish family, quite a traditional one in fact. And then before I can even remember, my parents migrated to the US with one-year-old me and my sister on the way. My father was pursuing his academic career in the US and he was granted a government scholarship for his studies. So his 10-year academic journey through grad school in the US ended up being my childhood. During that time, my parents struggled with three kids and they took on various jobs like pizza delivery and babysitting to make ends meet. We were actually pretty poor now that I think about it, although I never felt like it back then. I’m currently at the age my father embarked on this journey and I have also started my graduate studies in a foreign country. I can’t imagine taking care of a family of five right now, that was a bold move for him. But I guess having my mom around helped. I can see how it would be easier to migrate somewhere with someone you love. Anyway, my father’s scholarship required him to return to Turkey once his studies were over. This little condition changed our lives completely. At 12, the summer before 6th grade, we moved back to a small coastal town in Turkey, Çanakkale. I barely knew Turkish and I was extremely unhappy with this forced change. I couldn’t really do anything about it though. Throughout middle school, I attended a different school every year. My first three years were in three different schools in this new country that I had only visited a couple of times on summer vacations. Not only that, each of these schools were very different from each other, with completely different cultures. I didn’t know who I was in Turkey, I didn’t know how to navigate in this new environment, I could barely remember my new friends’ names because they were so strange to me. I was called “the American” by my peers and teachers and they would make fun of me whenever I made a cultural faux pas. My first school was the closest one to our house that our neighbors had recommended. I later realized that people perceived of it as a “gypsy school” which I suppose basically means that kids of minority and underprivileged families went there. There, kids were mostly on the streets and I guess I tried to follow their lead which quickly led my parents to a change of mind. My second school was a left-wing public school, wtf is that, right? It basically means that left-wing/Kemalist families sent their kids there. There, I realized that as a Turkish person, I had to love Atatürk. I didn’t even know who he was until quite recently. That was scary for me, I was so afraid that the other kids would exclude me if they found out that I didn’t really know why I should love Atatürk and that I thought the whole thing with his portraits and signature being everywhere (including tattooed on a lot of people’s skin) was kinda crazy. I just didn’t get it. There were a lot of fights in that school which my parents decided was distracting me from my school work. Then I was offered a free place at one of the two private schools in the city and I took it, not knowing what I was getting myself into. It was one of the schools of the Gülen sect and they were strictly religious. I remember my Harry Potter books being taken away because I wasn’t allowed to read fantasy at school. I remember my teachers literally cornering us on my birthday because we went out to eat cake after school with a bunch of guys and girls. One of those guys was my first boyfriend and I was threatened with detention because of that. Oh and also, it was implied that I was a lying whore. I was 13. I would be taken out of class very often to speak with the counselor who thought my family and I were not religious enough. Finally, my parents stepped in and I was untouchable after that but can you imagine the trauma? The year after, I started high school at a Science High School in Çanakkale and that’s supposed to be a good school but the thing is you’re totally deprived of social sciences and most good students are sent to these schools. Do you see the problem there? We did have history and literature but we spent that time studying for more “important” things like math and physics. We weren’t even allowed to want to be anything other than a doctor or engineer. It was highly frowned upon. And while all my friends graduated and continued their successful student careers in mostly these areas, I didn’t. Now, I really couldn’t make up my mind about what I wanted to be but four years in that environment was enough to make me think that since I definitely didn’t want to be an engineer because I didn’t really get what that was, I was going to be a doctor. But I wanted to go to university in Istanbul. I couldn’t get into any of the med schools in Istanbul and my plan was to wait another year and study so that I could. But then I just didn’t feel like waiting and I had a really high language score due to my English so I thought I might as well choose a university rather than a profession and I could just transfer to another department if I didn’t like it. So of course I chose the best university in Turkey, Boğaziçi University. And I was the first person from my high school to major in Western Languages and Literature. I was a real bookworm when I was a kid so I ended up really enjoying it. But the best part was that I was introduced to social sciences which turned out to be my “passion,” or whatever you want to call it. I wanted to transfer to or double major in psychology and despite my really high GPA (3.95) I was discouraged by the teachers I consulted, for some reason that I still don’t understand. That doesn’t matter anymore because I randomly took an elective Introductory Sociology course and I fell in love. I immediately transferred that summer and it was one of my best decisions. Although you must understand, I had to deal with constant pressure from people who thought that I had a chance to be doctor and I was throwing it away, on a downhill road to unemployment ever since high school. I stayed in various university dorms for 3 years and then I couldn’t take living with 11 other people anymore and I moved into a poorly chosen house in a problematic neighborhood because I didn’t want to ask my parents for money. That was a nightmare, luckily I went to Utrecht a few months after for my Erasmus exchange so it was a short nightmare at least. Utrecht was perhaps the best 6 months of my life, as if the very lack of belonging shared by everyone there I met, was perfect for me to feel like I belong. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. When I came back I moved into an empty room I found last-minute in a shared apartment. I stayed almost a year there and then I moved into a new house with a new friend. I spent almost a year there as well and that was one of the happier times. Unfortunately, we moved out from there when we graduated because I thought I was going to move to Germany soon but then I decided I wasn’t ready for that yet. So I stayed, but I didn’t have a house anymore. Or money. Once my student status ended, so did my scholarships and I was officially homeless and broke. I refused to live with my parents because I just really didn’t want to, I fought my whole life for my independence and I couldn’t just give it up. Plus my parents were super pissed that I just dismissed an opportunity to start my masters education in Germany so being around them was psychologically very difficult at the time. So I stayed with friends and occasionally at my parents’ house… for about 6 months. Homelessness was driving me crazy so I finally confronted my parents and asked them to pay rent for me because my full-time internship refused to pay me any more than a simple allowance that only covered my expenses of going to the office and eating lunch. Just after I moved into another shared house with someone I didn’t know, the pandemic happened. My flatmate was going through a rough period that had serious effects on her mental health which resulted in some awkward events that I won’t get into but the short story is that I ended up paying rent for a house that I didn’t feel comfortable staying at. And she literally went crazy, like seeing things that weren’t there and talking to supernatural beings crazy. I moved out from there after being accused of being the reason she went crazy by her parents and I went camping for the summer while I waited to start my master’s degree in Germany. And now I’ve already finished my first semester and I’m still not in Germany. Although I am paying rent for 4 months now for a room in Germany I haven’t even seen yet. I finally gave in to living with my parents which I suppose is okay for a temporary arrangement. So temporary is a key word here for me. Nothing has ever been permanent or even long-lasting for me. Everything is temporary. My country was temporary, my houses were all temporary, my main language is temporary, my friends are temporary. My thoughts are temporary, happiness is temporary. So where is home for me? I really don’t know. Some say that it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, so what if you’ve moved around a lot? But, I don’t know, it is a big deal for me. I’ve never had a sense of belonging, ever. I didn’t belong in America, I don’t belong in Turkey, I barely belong in my traditional family. I’ve never really belonged to any friend group for a long time or had a long relationship. I didn’t belong to any organization like a club or a job for any extensive period of time. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried desperately to belong to many things but it just never worked out. So… that was a summary of my life. All of this has led me to think long and hard about home and what it means. _Adaptation_ is an important concept for me. I believe it’s one of my strongest attributes. It’s my main survival skill. Everything changes, we all know that. But everything is changing really fast lately and I think the pace of change is kinda dependent on a person’s context. I think that in all that change, I was so preoccupied with adapting to my environment that I don’t even know who I am anymore. Trying to fit in all the time made me a generally likeable person as far as I know, but now I can’t stand being alone. I’m mostly confident in my social relationships but I don’t know how to deal with my own emotions, my own thoughts. It’s weird I feel like I’ve been neglecting myself for such a long time that I kinda want to avoid myself to not have to deal with it. The pandemic has been a mental nightmare for me at times. And I’m sure that I’m not alone in that respect. I don’t think that being an adaptive and agreeable person is necessarily a bad thing but in times of constant change, I feel like one needs something to hold on to. Something stable, not unpredictable, something to lean on. That sense of stability can be so calming. I think that home is not simply a house, but it’s whatever that thing is for you. It could be a place or a person or a group of people. My sister is the closest person I have that feels like home for me. And she’s been halfway across the globe for years now. The last time we actually lived together was 11 years ago. And my brother went to join her as well. How weird is it that me and my siblings don’t even have the same citizenship? They can call America home perhaps, but I legally can’t. I also don’t really want to. But I want to talk about home as a “space.” I’ve been struggling with ever worsening anxiety for a while now and I constantly feel like I’m on the brink of depression. I don’t have a terrible life to be honest. I may have gone through some things that are anxiety inducing, but that’s not it either. I know I can overcome social hardships as long as I’m at peace with myself. I’ve been thinking and I think I’ve found the problem, or at least a major problem. I don’t have a home, in the spatial sense. A home is a place that you can design, for the most part, according to your needs, desires, pleasures and habits. It has the potential to be a space that reflects you and expresses your identity. It’s your territory. Staying at my friends and my family, I’ve been in others territory for such a long time. Where I abide by their rules, their routines, their preferences. And I think that this has taken its toll on me, especially considering my tendency to adapt. I mean think about it, If you like to look out the window while sipping your morning coffee and reading a book, you can make that easier to do by the design of your house. You get to decide who to invite to your home and you decide the social atmospheres that will be created there. If you like to watch movies in bed, you can facilitate that. If you like to listen to music and dance you can design for that. You can choose the colors you want to wake up to, and how green you want your house to be. You choose the artwork that you want to encounter everyday, you practically design your everyday experiences and that is such a luxury nowadays! but I think its actually a need, at least for some people. Think about it, its a means for exercising your ideas about how life should be lived. And then there’s another aspect to it. I love to collect “souvenirs” but not in the traditional sense. Just small, sometimes worthless items like a signed coffee filter from my friend’s parents, or a unique work of art like a sculpture my friend made me. Or books and posters. And many, many photos. And I’ve lost most of these while moving around so much. See, I don’t remember my childhood as well as most people because after 12, I never had any stimulus around me to remind me of my memories and they slowly fade away when that happens. It’s a blurry haze and it feels like a dream. It makes me so sad to think that I’m forgetting all those little memories that make up my life and I think that’s why those little souvenirs were so important for me. And at the same time, I feel like they helped me express who I am and without them I feel kinda lost. I feel like I’m desperately trying to hold onto things that are inevitably slipping away and I hate that feeling. I never had a sense of belonging or a sense of community and I think my life is full of not so successful attempts to create that for myself but sometimes it feels really hopeless. We live in a world where its completely normal to travel halfway across the world for a job or for education, leaving behind everything you know and love. And for me, I’ve had to do that a bunch of times and I’m kinda sick of it. I just wonder where it’s going to end. Not soon. I’m trying to build a life for myself in Germany starting from a shitty room in student housing that lacks any sense of identity, but only to leave it for my PhD in a couple of years. And then I’ll start over and who knows where I’ll go from there. I sometimes try to let it go altogether and just accept a nomadic lifestyle but deep down I think it’s not really my thing. I guess I should establish a base, a place where I can always return to. And I’ve got plans for that, I’m not giving up. I’m homebound ;) --- *Originally published on [hexe](https://paragraph.com/@hexe/homebound)*