When the Meaning of Home Starts Changing

Home is supposed to be a fixed concept of a place, a feeling, a certainty. But when you leave the place you’ve always called home and start building a life somewhere else, that concept begins to shift. You start feeling like home isn’t just one place anymore. You miss home when you’re away, but when you go back, you feel like a visitor in your previous life. You start to exist between two worlds. Never fully here, never fully there. This is the paradox of home when you live between cities, countries, cultures, and versions of yourself. And this is when you realize home isn’t a place anymore.

Leaving home makes you nostalgic for everything you took for granted; the familiar streets, the inside jokes, the way the air smells. You hold onto these details because they make you feel connected. But then, when you finally return, something feels... different. Your friends have new routines and references you don’t quite understand. Your favorite café doesn’t feel the same anymore. Things don’t feel the same, although they do look the same. Then you start realizing that it’s not home that changed, it’s you. That’s when anger leaves its laces to sadness slowly.

When you first move abroad, everything about your new country feels unfamiliar. The language, the humor, the social rules. You start as an outsider trying to fit in, which is probably the most normal thing. But over time, you adapt, even if you don’t realize it. You pick up new habits, learn the cultural nuances, and start feeling like you belong. Or at least, almost belong, for some time. Then, when you visit home, you realize you’ve also become a little bit foreign in the place that once defined you. It’s a weird feeling as if home is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. You begin to understand that home isn’t a physical location. And after some denial, you slowly start accepting it. Home is not just where you were born, and it’s not just where you live now. It’s a collection of the people who make you feel safe, the places where your memories are, the moments of familiarity. You realize sometimes home exists in multiple places at once. Sometimes it's nowhere. At first, this realization feels bothering. But it can be beautiful. You can learn that home isn’t just where you came from, it’s also where you’re going. Home can be in the friendships you build, in the small routines that make the unfamiliar feel familiar, in the cafe that now knows your usual order, or in the comfort of hearing your native tongue in a foreign place. And maybe home isn’t meant to be one specific location. Maybe it’s meant to be carried with you.

These are my pure feelings, having returned home for the first time after moving abroad, only to the realization that what I left behind is no longer the same. This is a reminder to myself, and anyone reading, that it's okay to feel this way. It’s a part of the journey of growth and change.