Coming home for break is always a nonconsensual unraveling of self. Every damn time. Despite my past attempts – practically flailing my body into itself kicking and screaming – I cannot escape myself here.

No high can chase away the ghosts of former selves scrawled into journals, on pill bottle prescriptions, and in the crinkle of my mothers eyes. I see myself in the way she holds her body, in the way my jeans don’t fit, and in the scramble to find a long lost earring only recently remembered, yet somehow precious and necessary (it was never about the earring).

Being home in New York is deeply humbling. It is a ceremonial reopening of wounds; one that I have only recently begun to accept. I find myself hearing voices I thought I had outgrown. I see my body through sixteen year old eyes, then thirteen year old eyes, then back again to this twenty one year old self staring back at me. I see my folds and bloats and new growth and old scars. I see this road map that details parts of me I used to hide and hate. I face it. I hold all of us within me. I listen to the little girl inside of me begging for safety. I listen to her as she begs to be heard.

“I hear you.” I want to scream at my reflection.

I remind myself that I became the home I ached for.

I treat my vessel with the kindness it has always deserved. I draw a hot bath. I light a candle. I’d say a prayer if I knew any.

All of this becomes my ritual. I do it every day.

I sleep with ex lovers – allowing myself to remember the poetry I wrote for them. I reread journal entries and let past pain wash over me and past joy reignite me. I reintroduce myself to those I love as new and old and alive and they welcome me with warm arms. I am so lucky.

-E