After binge-watching “Maid” on Netflix, I couldn’t help but think of this question that the main character Alex asks her mom at the end. What’s my happiest day you might ask? Well, just like the main character, Alex, my happiest day hasn’t happened yet.
I don’t know when it will happen but I’ll know it’s the day when I finally have a home- a permanent home. Where I don’t have to move three times a year. Where I can breathe freely and stay without restriction. On that day I won’t forget what it took to get there. I won’t forget how I first moved out of my mom’s during senior year begging her to choose me over my stepdad. I won’t forget moving to my tio’s secretly and then to my first lover’s house where it didn’t get any better. I won’t forget the times I had to bite my tongue and tiptoe around the house in fear of awakening the monsters.
The truth is I’ve never felt like I’ve had a home. I’ve always been too big for the space given to me. Too loud, too opinionated, and too aware of what I deserve to be content with what I was given. I refuse to lose sleep over someone killing me in my dreams. I refuse to be told that I shouldn’t be tired because I haven’t done anything and need to clean despite taking finals all day. I refuse to live in another place where the walls echo the shouting of my stepdad and what would have been my father-in-law. I refuse to accept a toxic home. And until then, I will keep moving. I will limit my personal belongings to make them easier to move. I will struggle and cry again and again about having to move for the third time this year. But I won’t allow my own home to be torn down. I will keep searching. Searching for four walls that are big enough for the home that I have created within me. I will keep searching knowing that my home is out there. It will be my happiest day when I find a home where I won’t have to be worried about how long it’ll last.