When I was a kid, I was somewhat privileged in terms of having my own room during most of my childhood years. Personal space for storing things, playing, studying, and simply spending time is an invaluable asset in the life of any child or teen. Home has always been an integral part of my life. I understand the privilege and bliss of having a family and a home. Knowing you always have someone and somewhere to come back to, no matter how bad life beats you up, is reassuring.

With all the romanticism (and marketing) around modern nomadism, this is not something I would consider as a viable lifestyle. I desperately need to have a place that I can call my home. I’ve been searching for it ever since I left my family house in a quiet town to start a new life in a big city. As a person who has finished high school and enrolled in a junior year at a university, you can imagine I didn’t have much money. Even though I was already working part time as a freelance translator, this wasn’t enough to rent even a half-decent flat. Thus, I had to settle for renting a room.

Living with a landlord is never a pleasant experience for many reasons. And this is definitely not something you can even remotely consider your home. I can tell you that as a person who has moved several times from one landlord to another over the first three years at the university.

My friends and I used to have a differentiation between “going home”—retreating to the place where you sleep and study most of the day—and “going home home”—going back to your family house, usually for a weekend or winter/summer break.

Finally, I settled into another small room (hey, this one at least had a balcony) with the landlord, his wife, and their magnificent obese cat. Even though I already had a job at that point, I decided to stick with them at least until I finished my bachelor’s degree.

In 2020, when COVID hit, many things changed. I didn’t want to stay in the city and went to my family house to help my parents take care of the household and be farther away from big gatherings of people. I spent almost four months at this house. This was a somewhat lonely but otherwise peaceful time. Having a homestead with a garden and everything is a bonus if you want to spend some time alone.

When a lockdown (yuck, I hate this word!) started to ease off, it was time to go back into the city. I still had the job, and it was time to enter a master’s program. This time I found a small flat in a quiet part of the city and made it my home. While living in a rented flat is still not my definition of “settling down”, it was the best option I’ve ever had at that point of time. Plus, I wasn’t sure about the direction in which my life was going, so not tying yourself to a particular place seemed like a good idea.

Next there’s war. Waking up at 4 am to artillery strikes all around the neighborhood, saying to myself, “I’ll deal with it tomorrow” and going back to sleep. Just to wake up from dad’s call and realize it was not a dream. What happened after is an absolute mess. Living in a cellar bar for more than a week, then leaving the city under heavy shelling and resorting to relative peace in another city. A peace that could be disturbed at any moment by another siren or explosion somewhere in the city. It served as a constant reminder that the war is close.

In the end, all these misadventures led me back to my family house once again. To support my family, a household, and pray that another shell won’t land on the roof.

The dream of homeownership and settling down is as vague and distant as it can be right now. After losing so much, the future looks bleak. The only thing I am certain about is that my search for a place to call home continues.