Where Is Your Home?

It was a Saturday morning. The time was 10 o’clock, I had just finished my laundry, and had started my way up the stairs. It was at that moment when I took a second to catch my breath that I saw it.

Living close to a filling station had so many disadvantages. Aside from the noise, from both screeching cars and a persistent generator, the steady influx of fighting bus drivers, and the bright lights that never go off at night, there was still something to love about Kola Balogun Street.

This was one of the roads that connected to the exit of Osogbo. I remember passing Kola Balogun when I first arrived in the state.

Although then, I didn’t know her by her name, but as we got closer, the road and I, she became the friend that always said her goodbye last, and her welcome first whenever I visited.

The skinny, potholed road in the street of Kola Balogun got me. She shielded me from the police checkpoints during the COVID, when I would defy the stay-at-home orders to go in search of other living things.

When I didn’t have much, she comforted me by being a walkable distance from everywhere I wanted to go. Even on the days I had some loose change in my pocket, she never hesitated to drown me in a steady flowing river of buses and motorbikes.

She did everything to make me feel at home, and just like any grateful stranger, I accepted her efforts and never complained until I saw what I did that Saturday morning.

Have you ever felt anxious about a new environment? A school in a strange state, a job in a new country, a visit to someone you’re about to meet for the first time, or a trip that lasted longer than planned.

Not everyone can be introspective enough to relate to this, but for those who give themselves a pep talk whenever they are pushed to be in a new environment, I’m sure you can relate.

That scary reminder that this place/moment you’re in is your new normal. Yes, life goes on. You have to make new friends, and eventually find ways to keep going.

Instead of staying in the now, you are craving for the place your heart calls home.

One question. Where is your home?

Is it a house, a space, a state of being, or a sense of yourself that you should carry wherever you go?

Does it have an overwhelming aura of possessiveness within its walls? And, is it a place where you are the realest, rawest, unfiltered, and undiluted version of yourself?

For me, it was the Benue links bus that passed my street that Saturday. A moving reminder that I was far away from all the things I was familiar with.

The past becomes an adversary we cling to when the future becomes a stranger that the present barely knows.

Why do you find it so hard to start afresh? Why do you need a place to feel at home? Why can’t your home be you?

Think about it for a second, you being a house. Fully-built, with all the experiences of safety, happiness, and comfort hanging like photographs in the living room of your beautifully furnished mind.

You’ve felt at home in different places, with certain people, situations, relationships, and everywhere except yourself.

It’s time you became your home; whole, secured, comfortable, beautiful, and conducive for others to live in.

There’s a lot you’ve missed out on because you are scared of being content with yourself. Why do you keep squatting under people’s roof of opinions? Why are you scared of new scenarios because they don’t appear dressed in the cloak of everything you’re familiar with?

Most importantly, when will you stop giving a residential address the delicate task of being your peace when you can be the mobile address that carries it instead?

Finding home anywhere but yourself is like living in a rented apartment. Comfortable at a price, until you can’t pay anymore. They’ll always, most likely, ask you to pack out.

When you’re your landlord, you enjoy an untroubled peace wherever you are because all you need is inside of you.

For those of you who have been sleeping under the bridge, this is the evacuation notice you needed.

Be bold enough to try a new thing, and be truthful enough to admit when it’s not for you. In all, know thyself, love thyself, and be content in being thyself.

Maybe that way, you will stop feeling hurt when people leave you. Or, when the nest that for so long has been your comfort zone, pushes you to fall so you learn to fly.

What lesson did you take from this blog post? Tell us in the comments section below.