When Home Doesn’t Feel Like Home

And what to do about it.

Hi! I’m taking a break for a bit at the beginning of the year. We’ll be sharing a few favorite pieces from the past while I’m offline. I’ll be back with fresh content in February. See you next month!

Originally published on September 26, 2024

Confession time. I get a little thrill when packing my daily schedule too tightly. I will complain about it like my hands are tied, as though I had no say in saying “yes” to it all. 

But I secretly delight in it. 

I feel important when I have obligations and long to-do lists. I feel like the day is mine to save. I think I can juggle it and make it work. I even get a little high, not knowing if I can handle it all.

I love it because it leaves little time to unwind.

I love it because it leaves little time to face myself.

I love it because it leaves little room to be anything but the hero in the mess I created. 

I love it because it leaves little room to unravel. 

One Sunday morning, the crux of this conundrum presented itself.

My family was at home and there was nothing on the calendar. The four of us enjoyed a nice breakfast, and a morning thunderstorm rolled through and cleared the way for soft sunlight. The kids were coloring, and Joe was reading. Classical music drifted through the house. It was a snapshot moment of perfection.

Except I wasn’t there. I was in the kitchen, couched and ready to pounce on them with a newly orchestrated chore chart and to-do list we could complete to “catch up” before the week got started. 

At that moment, I paused and had a flashback. 

I am seventeen, slouched over my desk. I am outlining “House Rules” for my family. I slip each of them a copy on their bedside tables. I go to sleep hoping I’ll wake up somewhere new, our way of life transformed. I didn’t. 

What Is Being at Home?

While I have few memories of childhood, I distinctly remember a pervasive sense of uneasiness, especially when I was hanging out at home. I sensed I was doing something wrong a lot of the time. Watching the wrong thing on TV, not doing what I was supposed to be doing, not picking up after myself, and not helping my mom enough or with the things that needed the most attention. I would organize junk drawers, create new systems for our shoe closet, and create lists as a way to face the uneasiness. 

I worried about my mom. She was often overwhelmed keeping a house and family afloat, just like most of us are today. She gave it her all, held out her hands and grasped at what she could. I see her. I am her. I get it. 

That sense I had as a kid—that I was doing the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong way—was systemic. My mom didn’t have a lot of help from my dad, our sole provider, who was overworked as well. I worried about him, too. 

They were both underwater, in the middle phase of life with little kids and aging parents, trying their best to be good partners and parents and just make it through the day. There were smiles and family meals and laughter. I was loved, and I was on edge a lot. We all were. I became sensitive to chaos and clutter. I felt helpless to fix their stress, and in a lot of ways, felt I was part of the problem. I didn’t want to be a burden.

For me, home wasn’t a place to let it all hang out. And part of that belief lives inside me today. The feeling of being home was conditional. Those conditions have followed me into adulthood like a ghost. Home has been the place I’ve turned to cope with what I cannot control as an adult.

I’ve come to believe that when we deny ourselves the space to be, our subconscious finds a way to get those needs met. There are a whole host of ways it manifests itself—through a mental health crisis, chronic illness, or an identity crisis in the face of a great loss, divorce, or career change. 

We all need a safe space to turn to when faced with moments of reckoning. Home is often where we can turn inward, retreat, and find what we need in times of unraveling. 

Sometimes we find that home isn’t where we thought it was.