I Have A House, But No Home

The wind often whispers to me.

At the beginning, I thought it was nothing. Eventually, it started caressing me even on days where there were no signs of wind. And then it started speaking to me. Softly, faintly– It would graze my face like the hand of a concerned mother. It would direct me to paths I didn't know existed by gushing me towards it.

And strangely, I listened. Maybe because it was the only constant I had. Unlike walls that changed colour, or ceilings that sloped and straightened with every new address, the wind never needed introductions. It didn’t ask for proof of identity. It knew me. Even when I didn't.

People often talk about home like it’s a person, or a place. They speak of warmth, childhood rooms, creaking doors that sing them to sleep. But I have never had that kind of luxury. My doors have always closed softly, politely—like strangers parting ways. My windows opened to unfamiliar skies, and my floors never remembered the shape of my feet long enough to miss them.

I’ve always imagined myself to be like a suitcase. To be filled with emotions, locked in, and taken away from one place to another. A vessel that carries stories it didn’t choose, but must hold anyway. People unzip me, put their expectations inside, and close me again without asking if I have space left. I never get to stay long enough for dust to gather on me, never get to belong to a single corner.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why the wind speaks to me. It doesn’t belong either, yet it belongs everywhere. It slips through cracks and keyholes, it rests on trees it has no roots in, it brushes past faces that never recognise it twice. But unlike me, the wind doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe it has learned the art of existing without owning.

I, on the other hand, ache for ownership. Not of property, not of walls or land, but of a place that remembers me. A door that sighs with relief when I walk through it. A window that has memorised the way I push it open. A floor that knows the weight of my footsteps as if they were a familiar song.

Until then, I’ll continue carrying myself like luggage—

sturdy on the outside, scattered within.

I have a house, many many houses, but no home.

But maybe... a home isn’t something you stumble upon. Maybe it’s something you build slowly, out of people and moments and fragments you refuse to let go of. Maybe it’s in the laugh of a friend that lingers after they’ve left, or in the pages of a book that always smells the same no matter where you open it.

Maybe home is not a door or a window, but the feeling of being remembered. And if no place has remembered me yet, then perhaps I’ll be the one to remember myself. I’ll be the keeper of my own belonging, the anchor I’ve been waiting for.

Because if the wind can exist everywhere and still be whole, then maybe I can, too.