Coming Home Without Expectation
I’ve been thinking about home.
Not in a glossy, sentimental way, but in the real, breath-tight way that creeps up when you're tired and the walls around you feel too close. This apartment has never truly felt right. Sadie and I keep tripping over each other. We’re both too restless, too alive, to live in such a tiny space. She paces; I sigh. We look at each other like two creatures caught in a cage neither of us can name.
And maybe that’s why home is calling me again, the one I left in Florida.
But I don’t want to inflate it beyond what it is. I don’t want to see it as salvation, as if crossing the threshold will fix everything. I know myself too well. I understand how easily the restless gene activates once the glow fades. So I’m trying to walk toward home with eyes wide open, no grand illusions, no romantic projections. Just a quiet hope that it will feel like breath.
Because it’s more than just a house; it's a space I shaped with my own hands.
Before I moved in, I painted every inch of that place. The entire interior was yellow, all of it, and I transformed it into something softer, more grounded, and more like me. I designed the decorative wall myself. I spent a lot on remodeling the kitchen and bathroom, not out of vanity, but because I wanted to love the space I lived in. And I do. The shower alone — the water pressure — makes this tiny apartment feel like a bad joke.
There’s plenty of space here. Granite countertops. Enough room to move, think, and breathe. There's also a second bedroom, mostly used for storage now, but I already envision it as a hybrid of studio and sanctuary. A space to film my videos, speak my truth, and build something lasting from all the pieces I’ve been collecting.
And outside... outside, there’s life. There’s a pathway behind the house where people walk, and Sadie always used to greet the other dogs like a tiny queen holding court. I’ll sit there again, not for comfort but for connection. A wave, a hello, a “how’s your day?” That matters more than I let on.
The sunsets are stunning there. The bike paths are spacious and well-used. My neighbor Cathy — who cares for Sadie as if she were her own — still lives next door. Her dogs still come to my sliding glass door sometimes, looking for the one who left, she tells me. They don’t realize we’re coming back, but they’ll know it soon enough.
There’s a small Episcopal church nearby, the one I’ve driven past a hundred times but never entered. The one with stone walls and soft lighting. I’ve promised myself I’ll go. Not to believe anything in particular, but to be among people again. To sit in a space shaped by ritual and silence, and maybe even God.
Yet... I know it won’t be perfect. There’s a soffit to fix. It’s not a storybook ending. It’s just the next chapter. But maybe that’s the whole point.
I’m not going home to be saved. I’m going home to be steady. To be real. To be present in the place that remembers me — and lets me remember myself. As I finished writing this, the song playing through my speakers was Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Our House.” I couldn’t help but smile. Some mornings, the universe doesn’t whisper — it sings.
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