home.

Home is a cup of honey tea at 2 am in the morning, home is the smile on my mom’s face every afternoon when we come back from school, home is makeshift karaoke nights with my sister, home is waking up to my frenzied dog running around in circles every morning; it is the people around me, the people I choose to surround myself with and the emotions I choose to affiliate with it.

Home is what I make it to be, it is what I want it to be and yet I feel the most at home when I least expect to.

Home is fleeting moments and somber epiphanies which help you realise that in said moment, everything is going to be alright, at least in the seconds that are to follow.

And so, home is also impermanence, sometimes a transition period, a familiar liminal space that you’re staying in but feel like you’ll be leaving soon.

Holding that, home is a definition that is constantly changing, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but emphasis on the maybe because people you think you will never call your friend, you’ll call your home and places you think you’ll never find comfort in could eventually bring you a sense of self-fulfilment you’ve always craved.

What I consider my home today, could be very different from what I call home tomorrow; but I do know that it will always be a better definition. Because when you feel at home, you don’t have parameters to compare that feeling against, home is a feeling that you internalise and accept, not compare and reject.

Home to me, is what makes me feel the most secure with the person I am today.

So for now, my home is my mom’s smile, my sister’s disgusting jokes, my dog’s beady eyes, the sound of my friends’ laughter, the triumph of staying up till 3 am working until you finish what you started, making playlists for every melancholy, and going to the mall. But most of all, home is who I am right now, home is how I presently feel that no matter what happens, I will be okay, I just need to cry it out if I have to.