If there is any underlying theme in my incoherent pieces of writing, it is my search for a home. It is one messy search, I tell you. Of all the places that I have tried to make home, I was never at home as I was in the last place I lived in Hawaii. It was also the smallest.

What you see in this picture is all the furniture that I had. I don’t have any of them now. The cross is given to my dear friend along with the nightstand underneath. The bed is actually two dog beds I purchased at Costco put together. It was the creation of my gypsy mind. They are now comfy beds for my other friend’s dog, Spot.

That chakra chart is gone. I am no longer into chakra therapy. The stuffed blue bear got really old so I left it in Hawaii somewhere.

The green yoga mat in the corner is in Tennessee. Right now, I am using a yellow yoga mat that I left here at my sister’s house years ago. I just cannot separate myself from yoga, so I still do it regularly. However, I am not all OCD about it and do it like a ritual at the same time, to the same music, as I always have done for a long time.

This was the neat part of my studio. On the other side, near the front entrance, there was my road bike and all my paddling and cycling gears. I had my writing desk which is always messy with piles of books and notes and post-its everywhere on the wall. Then up a few steps is the kitchen and a small corner table and just one chair.

I sat on that single chair every morning alone and drank coffee. I ate alone. Sometimes, I drank alone, too, but that was the ex-alcoholic in me reappearing every once in a while. I did quit alcohol in the end.

I don’t know how many days I laid there on that dog bed like a dying dog. Panting from panic attacks, sobbing from depression, frustrated because I can’t sleep, sometimes I laid there motionlessly with vacant expression on my face reflecting my vacant mind and heart. But when I was not sick, and my spirit dwelled there inside of me, I was fully present. I was home. This was my home.

It didn’t surprised me when my therapist told me that I have an orphan spirit during our christian counseling session. “I can sense deep sadness, sense of abandonment, and an orphan spirit. Those are the things that make you suffer.” I was not surprised because I already knew. I knew what pain I was feeling, and I knew their names. I just did not know how to deal with them. I guess desperately searching for a place that I can call ‘home’, where I can lay down my heart, was my solution. I searched and searched and searched. I have never, ever stopped searching.

Purpose driven life was far from my agenda.

Success was not my driving force.

All I ever wanted was home.

Not just any home, but a place where I can freely be who I am, where I am not criticized, where I can express myself, and where I am loved purely with all pure intentions.

I wanted that home. That’s the only home I know. Anything less won’t qualify.

I spent my young days striving for that home of mine. When other children were tending their garden of goals and achievements, their future success, I spent all my energy along with my longing heart grieving and moaning for home. I wanted home. A safe place. A happy place. A place designated for love.

What I did not know all that time was that I already had that home. From the moment I was born, from the moment I was conceived, I was home. The moment God thought of having me, I was home. The moment I thought of God, I was home. I moment Jesus died for my sins, I was home. So with that lesson learned, I ditched my dreamy Hawaiian paradise home and became homeless.

I have never been happier.

And safer.