the home within my mind

I have this thing where I visit you in my dreams

My childhood home often feels split in half– torn by the duality of needing a place to come from, while also flinching at the thought of the person I was there, the things I experienced… and the person I was expected to be. 

There are scribbled notes and drawings in the back corner of the downstairs closet, ones I wrote with crayon and pencil and sharpie through-out the years that will never see the light of day. When home requires too many hiding places, you begin to believe you must hide parts of yourself from the world.

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Each time I return to my hometown with this longing delicately protected in my palms, life always seems to serve me with a harsh reality check— shoving me immediately out the back door.

A large portion of my life has been spent in search of this illusionary theory of ‘home’; seeking it in lovers, friendships, even physical spaces. You need a place to come from that makes sense. When you are desperate for shelter, the endless quest can make you destroy and ravage through your life— overlooking the simple understanding that home is a place we cultivate within ourselves; a quiet, grounded settling where you are it.

I’m still working on that knowing.

Years ago, just before COVID, I lost yet another illusionary concept of home— one that I sacrificed my youth to mold and sculpt into a space it would never fit. Starting over again triggered this same helpless feeling I had been attempting to outrun since childhood— one where I begin to frantically and desperately search for it anywhere and everywhere— to belong someplace.

To help ease the thoughts, I sat down one day and started sketching out physical places that felt the safest and most welcoming to me throughout my life. Until then, I hadn’t realized just how many of them there are. My memory failed me at first, having been years since some of these places were physically visited—how easily we begin to forget the details.

Each night, I used these little memories as visuals to ease my mind into sleep. It gave my thoughts something to fixate on; opening the door slowly as I step inside, conjuring up the start of a dream. It became a full coping mechanism. Full memories began resurfacing. I remembered how important these spaces were. I felt more and more comforted in daily life.

Even still, on my worst nights, I lay in bed, tossing the textured duvet cover over my head like a little kid barricading themselves in the closet with markers and crayons. I squeeze my eyes shut and begin at the front door of these safe spaces; walking through, inch my inch, filling in the memory gaps. Sometimes I trace the hallways out with my fingers in the air, taking my time to revisit the spaces that kept me safe.. In what feels like another life now. In the first few retraces it’s always a bit blurry, details missing in gaps of rooms or backyards or sink styles. But the more I visited, the more these places came alive in my mind all over again. I began to fill the walls with paint colors and specific wall paper, the dish towel patterns I used to wipe my hands on, or the smell of my best friend’s vanilla perfume trailing through her upstairs hallway. 

As soon as I close my eyes, I can picture the gold door handle to the back downstairs door gleam- as the overhead motion light flicks on with my arrival. I quietly turn the knob and enter the dark alcove with the set of one, two, three, four, five, six stairs— the ones that lead me to the eerily quiet open floor plan. It’s a considerable size for just the three of them, so on week nights it’s always dim, and the only noise is the muffled music from her brother’s room— drifting up from the basement.

I walk delicately on the old wooden floors, running my hands along the wall to find the door to the staircase— the staircase that is unnaturally steep, and long, and utterly pitch-black. There are no landings, no pauses, just groans from the floor as I make my way towards the soft glow of light from the second floor. The floor where all of the life resides.

The whole house smells like her, like someone I love, the way it’s embedded in all of their clothes and each new doorway you step into. traces of vanilla and sweetness, making up for the large, desolate rooms lacking furniture and knick knacks someone collects over a lifetime. What the six-bedroom victorian house lacked in things, it made up for in warmth.

I approach the all-white bathroom with 70s tile, and it’s filled with steam because we are always getting ready for something and she is always asking, “can I curl your hair?”or “do you want to borrow these jeans.. I bet they’ll fit now!” and “no you don’t need to learn how to do eyeshadow like me, you’re more beautiful without it.” there is always someone coming or going, but she never asks me to be one of them. she lets me overstay my welcome, she shares her shampoo and the space in full-sized her bed. Since learning to drive, I’m here more than I am most places.

The wood creaks beneath my feet in the hallway just before her bedroom door, and she’s already looking up from her desktop computer as I step through the doorway, eager to tell me something she saw on Facebook or about the party we’re going to tonight. she can always hear me coming and is never surprised I’m there. I realize now that something of home is knowing the weight of your friends’ footsteps, the simple recognition of their gate and the way it disturbs their body so specifically across the floor.

She’s looking up smiling and throwing her arms around me before telling me all about our plans for the night, never alarmed or annoyed or exhausted by my presence. “God, you look so grown up with your hair like that”, she says, brushing my grown out hair in front of my shoulders. “I am grown up!” 17-year old me shoves back at her, the compliment somehow feelings like an insult, reminding me I am somehow still an outsider— eager to be looked at and seen as one of them, one of her, the 23-year old girl no one can stop staring at.

I want her to forget the awkward 7-year old body she taught choreography to when I first auditioned for the company, to forget the way she had to delicately explain the use of tampons for the first time backstage because no one had told me what a period was, to forget my brace-face beaming up at her when she would tell me a story during practice. I want her to forget that she is still so much older and more interesting than me, even though our bodies are beginning to look the same and can share the same outfits on a Friday night. I want to close the gap, to be seen as something other than the little girl she willingly took under her wing, all those years ago.

I want to be just like her.

“You know what I mean!” she’s says— “…the years are just going by so fast.”

“I know what you mean”, I mutter in recoil, embarrassed by the eagerness of wanting to be seen…watching her lay out our clothing options on the bed, already on to the next moment of the night; unaware that this will all be gone too quickly…that it will one day be a memory palace I visit in my mind. How did the years go by so fast?

The room is beginning to warp and distort itself, reminding me it is just a memory that I can only visit. I become more aware of the fabric of my duvet, how it rustles on the roots of my hair, reminding me that I am grown and this is home and how lucky I am to have had it there, too. The back of my throat tightens when I try to remember the last time I’ve seen her, or hugged her, or heard her voice— how I never recognized back then how tenderly it spoke to me. When I can’t place the memory within the last ten years, the tears gently drop from their corners. I send out a little prayer that maybe she can still hear, because we are infinetley connected and she is living out there somewhere, happy.

I can still smell your vanilla perfume decades later, I can still find my way to your mother’s house, from 900 miles away with no GPS to lead me there. I can still find my way to your room by memory, in this maze of a house with all of the lights out, even with the new owners tearing down walls and replacing creaky steps. In the home that never required knowing the hiding places— where growing pains were soothed with scented balm and “yes, you can stay as long as you want”.

I didn’t realize how quickly I had grown up with you. because it’s one of the places where growing up didn’t hurt so much.

To be continued,

S x