“At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. 

Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.” 

Warsan Shire

Home is in Province One, hundreds of kilometers away from where I currently live. 

Home is a small semi-urban village five kilometers northeast of Itahari Chowk.

Home is what I left for better or for worse.

But home as a feeling left the place where I was born and raised, sooner than I left the place. 

I have always struggled to settle on the definition  of ‘home’. My idea of home, is a safe space for an assured sense of self, stems from its absence where I am from. Since childhood,  I received  love, shelter, food and safety but no space for myself to claim. So I could never associate the place I was born and raised in as a home. In that place, my sense of self felt as foreign as appreciation from Nepali parents. As I grew older, I stopped allowing myself to be attached to that place as a defense/ coping mechanism. 

Home could have been that place if my school friends hadn’t bullied me.

Even as a child, I prepared myself to detach an integral part of my identity; the place I was born and raised. Don’t get me wrong. I do not hate where I am from but I do not exactly love it either. Except for the familiarity, for the known, that has somehow always been comforting to me. But the known was always unknown about what I had feared them knowing. And they still are in the shadows.I do not owe them an explanation but knowing them would also make me feel better even if it means everything might change. 

I believe I have contemplated the idea of home long enough. Yet, I avoided embracing anything that came close to resembling it.

Home could have been society without heteronormativity. 

You see, as a queer person, my body, often, has only been the home for me. That too was stereotyped and judged because this body did not wear subtlety as a strong suit. So now the body keeps the score. This body that did not pick up on the obsession with sports and learned to play football, let alone score some goals, now keeps counts of trauma.

Home was also supposed to be my femininity, concealed from a young age and shrouded by shame and chastisement. 

Over time, I became indifferent like a cat sunbathing in the middle of a busy street. I was there yet distant. I started distancing from the warmth that once comforted me. I started to purposely avoid them. You see, it was a defense mechanism. I wanted to leave first before they had the chance to abandon me. The deep seated fear of rejection inside me grew bigger each day. And it screamed that all the familiar faces around me would outcast me soon as they learned about the unconventional parts of me. 

Things were different when I was very young . The innocence did not know any better and it was probably for the best. Now, in retrospect, it knew enough when my father quit being a raging alcoholic and decided he would try for foreign employment. 

Home was the little junk food party I had with my friends with Rs. 10 my father  gave me before he left for abroad for the first time.

And years later, home would be a physical one. Even as a ten year old, it meant everything to me. I was elated about discussing rooms with my siblings. I would have a room of my own, but importantly I could live in a bubble of my claimed space. I romanticized every bit of it. 

Home was the newly constructed walls as they stood tall symbolic of my parents’ pride, having built one in their 40s.

But I eventually turned into a teenager. To make matters worse, I had burnt out from being a good disciplined student, I started feeling unlovable unless I scored good marks and kept up with my academic “reputation”. So, I stopped focusing on my studies when my identity was only tied with being a class first student. 

Home could have been not feeling burnt out as a seventh grader.

Precisely put, I became the former gifted child who now had crippling anxiety. I was clueless as to what I was feeling, and my parents, all they could do was join the clueless club for they did not know anything better. Being put on a pedestal made me a perfectionist, which still lingers as part of my personality. But I learnt perfection is a myth – something I can convince others but not even tell myself – because I used to be hailed as perfect and I must continue that or else I will fail everyone. Then I longed for an escape and completing grade ten came along as a savior.

Home ironically was leaving the place I was born and raised for Kathmandu after grade ten exams.

New city but still the naive old me. I remember the celebratory joy I carried with me on the night bus ride. My parents were sending me for studies  but if you asked that seventeen year old Birat, he was on some self discovery drugs unguided. He made some stupid decisions. I am still upset with him. He came to Kathmandu and thought he won the world. He made decisions hastily exceeding the meters of wannabe. He was cringey but he was figuring himself out. Now, looking back, I want to defend  him because who is not cringey when they are 16 or 17? He was an exhausted teenage boy who often felt like he was running out of time. At 19, the idea of growing old drove him crazy! He did not feel accomplished and that seemed reasonable because he was ambitious. His father often pressured him to excel. So he thought he would take it abroad. 

Home felt like leaving Nepal sipping wine on my first international flight as a naive 20-year-old.

I thought I would find a home when I went to another country but then along with my luggage  arrived the baggage of insecurities. I thought I would have a fresh start. But anxiety self-invited itself and slipped inside me with every glass of wine I had on that flight. The alcohol buzzed me a little and left the party early but anxiety overstayed like inconsiderate relatives who refuse to read the room. 

There I was in a foreign land feeling every ounce of inadequacy. Oh, the weight of not being enough! Why was it so heavy? I experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows. I was still discreet about my queerness. Thankfully, I had some good support system who enabled me to take it one day at a time. 

I wish home was the platonic friendship that we carried on for life.

Everything else crashed – my mental health, studies and financial situations. When I returned, I went straight home, Itahari. But why would things work out if it is not meant to be? I stayed a few years at home not feeling at home. I was a mess. Then along approached the unprecedented with cataclysmic fear. My mental health was in shambles. I picked up scattered pieces of my chaotic state of mind and went to a psychiatrist before the second lockdown. I had started a job before I sought advice so that money gave me confidence. I did everything at home to feel the sense of belongingness but my heart yearned for something more. 

Home could have been acceptance of my identity from loved ones.

I knew I had to stay in Kathmandu. So I went there for my residency with Kaalo 101. After it ended, I decided to look for a job and find a place, which is exactly what I did. Now a year and a half later, I quit my second job and I am doing what I love to do – writing, being an educator and more. I sometimes just have the comfort of my room and it feels enough. 

Home weirdly is a flat I live on rent because freedom is chaos, but it’s my chaos. 

Home is an idea I will keep on longing for. Home for me will always be that place or person who accepts me for who I am, without conditions. It will be a place that not only allows me to simply exist but also thrive. All this time, I sought home in someone or somewhere else when solitude has been my strongest home. But the heart knows I deserve more. So I offer words of solace whispering  “soon enough”. 

Until then, home is where the heart is but the heart is not where the home is.