What does home mean for you?
How do you define the concept of home? Is it a place, person/people, things? How does having/not having home impact you?
I’ve learned that I struggle to keep it together when separated from home.
A little context: I just finished my first cacao ceremony with my queer Taino community and felt a strong urge to write about home and community and some of the challenges I am currently facing. I’ve been near tears since about 3/4 into the ceremony and am hoping writing will help me fulfill whatever Madre Cacao might be trying to help me understand. I feel raw and this piece might be the most vulnerable writing I’ve shared - please be kind if I decide to publish this and you respond.
I have changed addresses 4 times in less than two years (plus extensive travel). I haven’t even bothered to memorize my current address. Over the next 4 months, we will finish our time in Veracruz, spend a few weeks in Indiana, a week in Atlanta, a few weeks in NY/CT, a quick trip to Tennessee, and then we will likely head to Puerto Rico for one of our longer stretches (at least 6 months). It is a privilege to have the means and flexibility to move around per our academic, professional, etc., needs but a nomadic lifestyle does not support my mental well-being.
While I have loved living in Veracruz, and it is the closest I have felt to having a physical home in a while, the last place that truly felt like home was Bloomington, Indiana in summer 2022. I had been living in the same apartment since summer 2019 where my art (& art supplies) and books lived and I was within walking distance from everything I needed, allowing me to feel connected with my community. I had multiple friend groups, favorite places to go, pole dancing classes, and walking routes that brought me joy. I felt truly interconnected with my surroundings.
I was living across the country from the man I love — the man I married while living apart because we knew that we wanted to stay together despite the physical distance at the time. But once I started dissertating, I no longer had to stay in Indiana. It was an opportunity to be together again and so of course, I took it. I left my Bloomington community, a home where I had nurtured roots that I wasn’t ready to leave, to be with Alfredo.
Alas Tempe, Arizona, my new temporary dwelling, didn’t feel like home. Instead, the stability, groundedness, and ability to feel centered that home has historically given me was now transferred to Alfredo.
Unfortunately, this meant that instead of feeling safe and whole on my own and within myself, I began to feel anxious, abandoned, and lonely in Alfredo’s absence. Which, as you can imagine, felt shitty.
It was also out of character. I have lived in multiple towns and cities in four countries and never felt the need to “acclimate.” While community was always important to me, I was comfortable and content on my own, and that made it easy to be grounded as I carved out my space and found community in new places. Suddenly finding myself so completely dependent upon someone else for my sense of emotional well-being at 32 years old destroyed my sense of self.
The change in my sense of safety also meant a change in our dynamics. Back in Bloomington, when Alfredo went out on a date I generally enjoyed the time alone to work and watch my shows. I would mentally prepare myself for the probability that I wouldn’t see or hear from him until the next day. I didn’t love the idea of not spending the night together but it was a completely manageable feeling that I felt prepared to handle on my own. If I didn’t feel like staying home, I also had the option of calling up a friend and going out because my community was vast so it felt like there were possibilities galore.
This changed when I got to Arizona. There I felt trapped and alone. It was too hot outside to go for walks and even when it cooled down, it wasn’t a physical environment that brought me joy (I’m a lush trees and river/ocean kinda gal - cacti don’t do it for me). For a while, I didn’t have a community beyond the people he introduced me to and I was struggling to find “my” people.
Even Alfredo going to class felt challenging. More than two hours alone and I felt anxious. When he tried talking with me about having overnights with his girlfriend at the time, I couldn’t respond, I just burst into tears.
Rather than improving and acclimating, these feelings got worse over time. For the first time in my life, I was having not only regular anxiety attacks but also panic attacks. I started seeing two therapists, to make sure that when one was on vacation or otherwise unavailable, I would still have weekly support. I felt like I was always drowning, my sanity was in shreds, and my experience of his other relationships felt tortuous. I felt simultaneously ashamed of my inability to handle what was previously not a big deal and hurt/resentful for having to hold so much pain all the time.
After what was a horrible mental health year for me and a difficult year for our relationship, we finally left Arizona and I swear it was like the clouds parted and the birds started singing. I don’t think I’ve had a panic attack since.
Though I was doing phenomenally better, we also knew there was a lot of repair work and rebuilding of trust and safety that needed to happen. Alfredo decided that moving forward, he would let potential partners know that overnights weren’t an option to reduce some of the stress as we repaired. Though I felt guilty, I also felt grateful.
Both we and I have been doing very well so I didn’t prioritize finding a new therapist and continuing to work through my horrendous year. However, recently, the topic of overnights resurfaced due to some specific circumstances. Given how well I’ve been doing, I thought I’d be OK. Then, when I was reminded about the potential overnights, I felt my anxiety rise and we talked about it a bit. Then I had a nightmare which I didn’t quite understand. I just knew I needed to share it with him which led to me crying and hyperventilating through an anxiety attack as I started to realize that the trauma of the year before had not been processed.
I had felt free from that experience because I wasn’t being exposed to triggers that activated the trauma. Now that I am activated, I’ve started experiencing waves of how I had felt back in Arizona. Ashamed, lost, alone, devasted, spiraling. I have started experiencing flashbacks in the shower and bed and it is not a good time.
In response to a metamour’s (lover of my lover) questioning of my insecurity related to overnights, I reflected. I thought about the fact that my anxiety has little to do with who he spends the night with — it could be a work thing, friend thing, girlfriend thing — all options suck. Because I’m not worried about being replaced or not feeling loved — I feel incredibly secure about our connection. So what’s the issue?
That’s when I realized intense feelings arise because he is my home. And if he isn’t home, then I’m not at home in my body and in my surroundings.
Two years ago, when I lost my physical home, my sense of home shifted to him and never shifted back. Sure, my tolerance for his absence has grown through feeling more stable in our current conditions but ultimately, I remain anxious in his absence.
This has been a whopper of a realization. Nothing is fixed by realizing this but now I know what is happening. I have an idea of what I am working towards. Our love is beautiful because we don’t need each other, we want one another. We choose one another. My goal is for that to be an embodied reality once more. To find stability and grounding in myself that is then nurtured through his love and the love of the rest of my community.
This realization has been terrifying. Writing this has been painful. But hey, I am learning. Thank you, Madre Cacao, for making me sit with the scary things. I think I might be feeling a teensy bit lighter already.
I sat with whether or not to publish this and obviously, I did since you’re reading it. First though, I sat with what I believe are the lessons from sharing something so personal - especially without a clear learning goal (it’s the teacher/facilitator in me). Here are my thoughts about potential take-aways for readers:
an opportunity to reflect on what home means for you and how you create safety within yourself and with others.
polyamory/non-monogamy is hard and looks different for different people, for all sorts of reasons. Shifting relationship structures for ourselves is a journey of unlearning and it’s not done within a bubble, other aspects of our lives impact these experiences.
I hope you’ll be kinder with yourself than I was with me as I was figuring all this out.
Unprocessed trauma might appear to be in remission as it hangs out in waiting but it is often impacting our whole selves (body, mind, soul), even when we aren’t acutely activated. We deserve to honor ourselves and process, grow, and make room for living with our trauma.
If you’re willing, I’d love to hear any takeaways you had upon reading
