Home is Me

By: Kayla Murphy

Home used to feel like a place I had to find. Now, I know it’s something I carry.

Home is not a place I earn. It’s not a place I wait for. It does not exist outside of me, fixed to an address or tied to someone else’s presence. It lives in the quiet rituals—the way I wrap my hair at night, the scent of coconut oil warming between my palms, the soft familiarity of freshly washed sheets. It’s in the music I play while cooking, the cadence of my own voice when I talk to myself without realizing. Home is the way I exhale when I’m alone. It’s the permission I give myself to be soft, to be unguarded, to exist without performing.

I have lived in enough places to understand this truth: everything external is temporary. Cities change, people shift, and circumstances unravel and rebuild. But because I remain, I am never without home.

In unfamiliar cities, I unpack slowly, intentionally. I place things just so—a book on the nightstand, my favorite mug by the sink. I light a candle, something soft and musky, and suddenly the space shifts. It recognizes me.

I am the constant. The thread that runs through every version of my life. The one who adapts, who rebuilds, and who remembers.

There’s a quiet power in that realization. Because no matter where I go, I am never starting from nothing. I arrive as home.