Finding a home

Soft September sunrise is streaming into my home, bouncing off the canvas I'm working on, rolls of creamy woollen yarn, photo frames with frozen moments of joy. I look around, a cup of green tea in my hand, quiet jazz in the background, thinking of all the homes I have had, and how my idea of home transformed with each move.

The first home that I remember was a two-room apartment facing a hill lined with maple trees, where I would play with local neighbourhood kids, and jump into the piles of leaves in autumn. My brother and I shared a room, where we built forts under the table, and watched TV at the far end of the room - I still remember the mysterious intro track of X-files and the space-themed ad counting down the days until the year 2000. When I was a five year old, home felt like something utterly permanent - an unquestionable constant in my life. My home contained my toys, my clothes, my birthday parties, my first attempts at reading books and writing Christmas cards. My objects, my rituals, my experiences. Home as divine permanence.

The year two thousand came and went, and that is when we moved, the sense of permanence starting to transform. Now we lived in a home of three rooms, my brother and I no longer sharing one. I remember the first night at my new room, full of unpacked boxes and just as unpacked excitement - waking up feeling so deeply happy to create a new home. It was the first time I started seeing home as an act of active creation. I filled bookshelves with novels, first in Lithuanian and then in English, brought kittens and ladybugs as pets, brought friends, a piano, a passion for photography. A passion for exploring the world.

When I finished high school, I left. And this is where my training routine for impermanence started.

I lived in a tiny bedroom of a massive palace on the Grand Canal as an au pair of two Venetian siblings, getting to know Venice as an old friend, getting to experience the wonder of taking a boat to a birthday party and never worrying about traffic lights.

I lived on a sofa in my brother's West London apartment while planning my gap year and attempting to work in a cafe - where I lasted solid two weeks, but learned the difference between cappuccinos and lates and flat whites, which can be a useful life skill. In some places.

I lived in a bedroom of a house in Australian farmland, six hours away from Sydney - inland - being woken up by screeching colourful birds, watching kangaroos through a kitchen window while washing dishes, and sleeping under three blankets at night as Australian winters proved to be brutal for my northern expectations of having central heating.

I lived in a university dorm in Rotterdam, studying research papers on cognition in a corner of a room, daydreaming in the opposite corner, sharing the home with an Italian, Finnish, and German girls. The German girl held the house together.

I lived in a bedroom that beat the record of how tiny a room can get - which means, of course, that I was back to London - this time a central spot around the corner of Barbican, where I kept catching discounted tickets to operas, concerts and cinema screenings, until my walls no longer fit the tickets I was proudly displaying. My flatshare involved Italian, French and Indian ladies. I have a feeling that this time I was the one holding the home together.

Then covid kicked in, exacerbating the feeling that was budding in me already - I was done with tiny bedrooms, the household drama on overflowing trash unfolding on text, and waking up with a scent of a freshly cooked curry at six-bloody-am. Now, there was beauty in it: celebrating the lockdown Easter by baking together, sharing birthday hugs and relationship disasters. But the mysterious virus helped me make up my mind, and I moved to an attic by the sea. I suddenly had the luxury of owning my space. It was quiet, and I could enjoy the silence or play my ukulele without worrying that I am bothering anyone. I could plant sunflowers in the middle of the living room. I could eat frozen blueberries late at night without worrying about waking anyone up - in fact, that's exactly what I did my very first night there. Next morning, I could get up at the break of dawn to run with no complains about causing noise. I loved this space and the autonomy it gifted me.

And yet, the sense of impermanence lingered, having eradicated the sense of home. I enjoyed my cosy space, but approached it cautiously, avoiding furniture purchases, as I kept thinking of the next move, which, having moved so much, felt inevitable and just around the corner. My intuition was confirmed, when the landlord informed me that he was selling the apartment. I realised that nothing is really tying me to this region of the world, and that I was able to work remotely, so I gave up on the idea of home altogether, packed everything into a single suitcase and a backpack - with a couple of boxes of books and my favourite mugs sent to my parents for kind storage - and I started a whole new stage of impermanence.

I lived in an apartment of a village in Tuscany, all windows facing green mountains, where I could hike on the weekends, spending workdays working in a light living room surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves of books. This is where I realised how much I love the quiet, the light and the greenery of a village, beyond the excitement and art of a big city.

I lived in an attic in Pisa, a true attic where I would always need to watch my head when walking from the bedroom to the living room, and from the living room to the kitchen - the kitchen being the only place where I could walk up straight while avoiding head injuries. The kind host was a retired Italian pianist, who left me a handmade pizza in the freezer and called me a fairy. I took long dark November walks along the river, keeping a distance away from people, as instructed.

I lived in a yet another almost-attic in Florence, this time a retired designer showing me around, proudly explaining how he built the apartment. I spent mid-winter here, walking to some of the most beautiful galleries in the world, jogging along the river, looking at massive art books while curled up on the sofa with a tea late at night, and having lavish breakfasts with pistachio filled croissants from the local bakery.

I lived in an yes-I-know-at-this-point-I-have-a-type attic in Cinque Terre, hiking the trails among colourful villages on the weekends, watching San Remo festival with local red wine and pear-pecorino filled pasta. This beautiful space was then marked by terror as I was in this apartment when Ukraine was attacked in 2022, listening to the surreal Italian reporting, feeling numbed, scared and helpless.

I lived in an apartment on a coast of the Atlantic ocean, doing yoga on a terrace, going through job interviews in an incense-infused living room, running along the coast while watching waves hit the shore and visiting my friend in a colourful house by salt marshes lined with flamingos.

I lived in a house in a village on the island of Rhodes, walking hours to reach the ancient city, grabbing the best spanakopita in a local bakery, working throughout rain storms and electricity outage, and staring at the bright clear autumn stars.

I lived in a flat in Athens, having tahini and olive paste covered toast on the terrace as the city was waking up, exploring the ancient ruins, exploring my own heart that was increasingly feeling uneasy, even when having this freedom to work from anywhere, and with a job that afforded me all this beauty.

I lived in an apartment on the Italy-Swiss border, mountains greeting me as I opened my eyes in the morning, mountains swallowing the last ray of light at night. It was such a peaceful place, and I took walks observing snow-capped mountain tops, took trains to Geneva and Milan to see friends, took steps to consider what is missing in my life.

I lived in an attic flat (back to it!) in Trento, the brightest place I have ever stayed at, with some of the loneliest days I have ever had. And yet I kept running along the river, making risottos with local romanesco, and starting to quietly put a plan together, without quite realising it.

I lived in an apartment in Gouda, designed by the artist living downstairs, with floor-to-ceiling windows and a local cat constantly trying to come in, with a record player and some of my happiest days. My time in the Netherlands was filled with swampy walks and conversations about Bhagavad Gita - meaning, friend reunions. Towards the end of it I was convinced that community is what I have been missing, that living around friends is what matters. And that you can never have too many stroopwafels.

I lived in a flat in the heart of Lisbon, working on a soft rust-coloured sofa as I watched the cruise ships pass through the window, exploring the city and ranking pasteis de nata, until my life was stopped in its tracks, or until it greatly accelerated - in a way, it's the very same thing.

Thinking back, I distinctly remember the day before moving away from my first independent home, looking around and thinking that I won't have this sense of comfort for a while now. But little did I know how comfortable I would feel living in all these different places. I fell into a routine of spending about 5 weeks in each town, taking a train or a flight on the moving day, bracing for everything to run on time and smoothly, and then reaching a new spot in the afternoon, exploring the local food and taking a walk in the neighbourhood. Next morning I would find a route for running, unpack, stock up on groceries, find the best spot in the apartment to work and get ready for the work week. I would pack each weekend with local adventures, going on hikes and finding farmers' markets. Then at the end of five weeks, I would pack up my earthly possessions - at this point I was so efficient at it that it would only take half an hour or so. The next morning would kick off the new five week period.

But then, of course, Lisbon happened. Here I met my partner, and even though some more moves followed, at his point, I won't make you travel through even more apartments (rest assured some of them were attics). My sense of home finally started to settle. Even more importantly, by looking at what changed with every move, I started to realise what stays the same. What kind of person I am. What is influenced by the environment - the weather, the apartments, the culture - and what lives deep in me and cannot be escaped regardless how far I run from it. I knew who I am, I knew what I need and I knew what felt like home. It was exciting to finally stay somewhere for longer than a couple of months. To have a running route that I wouldn't have to abandon a few weeks in, to find a local breakfast spot I can keep revisiting, to start meeting local people and to know that the first meetup is not the last.

Before long, I was living with my partner in a light apartment where the river met the ocean. Looking back, this home was built in layers. Just as in my childhood, the things, the unquestionable objects first took priority as we approached the mission to furnish our home with enthusiasm. After multiple exhausting Ikea trips adding plants, shelves and hangers into our space, we started moving towards less practical, but even more important parts: putting our memories on the walls, and then starting to fill up the space in between of the walls - with experiences. Here we cooked lasagnas and painted our dream farm, read poetry aloud and ranked wine from different Portuguese regions, played jazz records, played chess, played life. This is when the apartment was starting to truly become home, and with time I realised that this is the most important part - home as a space that we fill with our favourite activities, the space that we share, home as this relationship-space fusion, seemingly just a collection of our possessions, but also the intangible atmosphere that the using of these possessions create, that our emotions, thoughts and dreams create.

Now, I no longer move monthly and even no longer choose to have a career that provided me with all those beautiful homes, but I feel I received a much bigger gift having gone through this process. You can probably sense that I may be arriving at a very cliché conclusion - we can find home in people - and ultimately, this is true, but as someone who slept in dozens of different beds in the last decade (sounds more promiscuous than intended), I want to offer a more nuanced perspective. Physical space matters. It does. I lived in apartments that were so utterly cosy, that I almost didn't care what is on the other side of those walls. I would wake up and feel at peace just witnessing the beauty around me. And yet, I remember travelling to a spacious loft in Sicily for my birthday, and crying my eyes out for days. The beautiful space was not enough to clench all the distress and loneliness.

And what a gift it is to finally understand these layers - home as objects, home as rituals, home as people. Going from the childhood sense of immovable permanence, to impermanence brought by constant moving, and in the end, I feel, landing somewhere in the vast space of omnipresence - home as a space that I always carry within myself, and can always recreate no matter where I am, that I can share with others. And that sense of safety, that sense of true belonging and the humble offering is where I choose to live.