When Home Doesn’t Feel Like Home Anymore

It’s a typical November with grey rainy days, with days of sunshine sprinkled here and there. Days are shorter, nights are longer. Typical Pacific Northwest weather.

It’s the same city, just a different year. It’s the same place, same buildings, same streets, both familiar and different faces. People stare down at their phones without looking up. Blank stares ahead as people in thick jackets walk past, earphones in. You wonder what song they’re listening to. Is it an upbeat song? Is it the sad song they’re listening to get over the heartbreak? You pass by someone you know – you wave and force a smile on this cold Tuesday morning.

You sit in the same places to eat lunch. You make conversation with the same several people you call your friends. You do the same thing day in, day out. At night, you sit down at the neighbourhood bar, order your usual, smile and say thanks when the bartender pushes your drink across the counter. You can hear the ice cubes clinking against the sides of the glass. Maybe the drink will help to loosen you up, ease that stress from the everyday. 

Maybe you’re sitting at home, typing up emails, looking at your messages, staring at your pages of notes. It’s just like every other night. Your eyes hurt from staring at the light of the computer screen. Your chest feels heavy, like bricks weighing you down. You can’t remember the last time you felt genuinely happy.

Home doesn’t feel like home anymore even at the end of a long day, and you toss and turn at night in the dark of your room, waiting for sleep to overtake you.

It’s become more than just the work you do all day. It’s the superficial friendships. It’s reaching out, but your presence doesn’t feel valued anymore by others. It’s the people, and the meaningless interactions that only drain you further. It’s the ignored messages left unread for days.

It’s the city that’s come to be a constant reminder of betrayed trust, the people who’ve broken your heart, and the screaming and fighting. It’s the streets and roads you’ve walked on with no real purpose and tears in your eyes.

It’s all the places in this city where you made memories – but with all the wrong people – and wherever you go, you can’t shake the pain. It’s been far too long in the same damn place, and nowhere here feels welcome.

Maybe it’s time for the change a lifetime. Maybe it’s time to get away. Life is too short to be stuck in a place where you’re not happy. When you really think about it, if it’s truly going to change your life to be somewhere new, then what’s holding you back?

Tie up those loose ends, pack your things, and move to a different city. No matter how hard it may be, leave behind those people that don’t benefit your life anymore or make a positive influence in your life. Leave behind the people who took for you for granted, and don’t let them take up any more of your time. Leave behind the things and activities that don’t make you happy anymore. Change your path.

Leave behind the toxicity and the people that hurt you and tore you apart in all the worst ways. Make a good story of it when you finally heal. Leave behind all that negativity, but take your lessons with you when you go.

Start anew in a place where no one knows your name, no one from your past can weigh you down anymore, and no one knows your story. They don’t know your burdens, your worries, and your fears. They don’t know about the people of your past, all the drama, and all the pain.

You have a blank canvas, and now it’s yours to determine exactly what you want to make of it. Maybe you’ll find your new home in a place you’d never thought you’d be comfortable.

And just maybe you’ll find yourself again, along with a truly newfound happiness.