Home Away From Home

What I bring with me when I go outside.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

Sometimes I marvel at the fact that I used to be someone who went out - to bars, to parties, to shows - multiple times a week. Someone who worked, at times, multiple jobs in person. Someone who ran all of my errands on foot or by public transit, moving constantly through the world.

I marvel at these past selves because, now, one day of doing one thing outside is often followed by a day (or more) when I can’t leave my apartment.

I’m deeply grateful for my home, for the sanctuary it offers. And I’m also unsettled by how difficult it can feel to step outside.

I exist in a liminal space. No longer who I was, not yet who I’m becoming. In this threshold, I both fear that I’m stuck at home and trust the intelligence of my body that keeps me here.

My body knows where I can go, when, with whom, to do what, in ways that actually support my becoming. My arrival. My homecoming.

I’m mostly home because I need to be. And I sometimes wish I didn’t need to be.

I’m highly sensitive - or, as a mentor would say, I have high sensory intelligence. I feel everything. Especially energy. When I was younger and disconnected from myself, I was an energetic sponge soaking up everything around me. I couldn’t always tell if what I felt was mine, belonged to others, or was just ambient in a space. I processed it all, unconsciously cleaning up the energy of others, feeling what they couldn’t feel for themselves.

I do that much less now. I’ve learned energetic hygiene out of necessity. Still, leaving home can be hard. Here, at home, in the one environment where I have sole energetic influence, I get to feel just me. I can apply my sensory intelligence to my own experience, my own process. In this quiet, I reconnect with myself. With the love that I am.

And that love, the love I find here, is what helps me to locate the love outside of here.

When I do step out, I practice carrying my home frequency with me. My gaze softens. My presence shifts. I attune to kindred frequencies, humans and flora and fauna that resonate.

And I notice people notice me, when I’m vibing in my home frequency. Stares, smiles, smirks, scowls. A spectrum of responses. Because a person who feels at home in themselves, who moves through the world from that place, is immediately recognizable. How we respond to that recognition in others tells us everything about how close we are, or are not, to the home within ourselves.

The people and places that feel like home to me now are the ones in which I am safe and supported to be my own home.

I moved often as a child. I had to learn to make home wherever I could. That skill is a part of me. But the paradox is this: now that I’ve finally landed in a geographic location that feels more like home than anywhere else I’ve ever lived, I find myself spending most of my time inside.

The younger versions of me who were always on the go, pounding the pavement, booked and busy - they had to be out. They didn’t stay home because they didn’t have one. Not really. Not inside themselves.

But I’m home now.

Photo by Xan Griffin on Unsplash