There’s a version of life you don’t recognise when you first step into it. It doesn’t announce itself. It just quietly becomes your normal. Learning which grocery store is closest. Finding the sunny corner of the room. Buying another plant even though you promised yourself you wouldn’t. Then, just when it starts feeling like home, you’re packing boxes again. And only while leaving do you realise you’ve been living a life built on temporary addresses all along. 

The kind where home is never one place. Just a series of rooms that held you for a while.

I moved to Pune with five suitcases in June 2018 for my undergrad. That was my entire life.

No “I’ll take this later.”
No cupboards left behind at home. Just everything I thought I needed, zipped up and carried with me.

I lived in a PG first for seven months. Three girls, one room, cupboards that filled up too quickly.
Somewhere between fashion college and growing up, my things started multiplying. More clothes than the cupboard could hold. Fashion magazines I kept “for inspiration.” My favourite coffee mug. A corkboard with polaroids and receipts from random café visits. Plants that somehow survived hostel life. None of it was expensive. But together, they stopped the room from feeling rented. 

The room didn’t grow, but my life did. So it started feeling smaller.

Then came the one BHK in Feb 2019 for the next three years. A friend, a slightly bigger kitchen, a little more breathing room. We bought stuff, a lot of stuff

Then we started playing house!

Added plants, photographs, and hung fairy lights. For the first time, it felt like we weren’t just living; we were staying.

Until we weren’t.

She left. I stayed back in that same house, surrounded by things that once felt shared. I didn’t decorate much after that.
Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know if I was staying long enough to put that effort in. 

Then came another move. A job in a different part of the city. Long commutes. Expensive rent. And a version of me that was starting to get scared of comfort. So I left again in March 2022. This time, into a home I built with someone.

And this one, I gave my whole heart to it. New curtains and fresh plants.
Cushions, bedsheets, things for the kitchen, we didn’t really need but wanted anyway. A refrigerator that made it feel like permanence had finally arrived.

I didn’t hold back in this house. I let it become ours. And maybe that’s why leaving it hurt the most.
The relationship didn’t last. The job changed. And suddenly, everything I had carefully built became something I had to pack away.

Again.

By then, I had more than I started with. A lot more. 

So I packed it all up, once again, and moved into another house. It was April 2023, and this time, it was just me. 

Lamps, overnight bags, little souvenirs I’d picked up along the way, because I always thought, I’ll still be here. Somewhere.

But somewhere keeps shifting. And slowly, you realise, you can’t carry everything with you.

Another move, Jan 2026, this time I didn’t even try. I gave things away. Left things behind. Packed only what felt necessary.

Came back to my hometown with less than I had built, but more than I had started with. And even now, I know,  if I leave again, I’ll leave things here too.

The stuffed toys on my bed. The things that don’t fit into suitcases anymore. The things that quietly became part of my life.

Because that’s the truth no one tells you about moving, you don’t just change homes.

You shed them.

Over and over again.

So how do you live in a place you know you might leave? Do you hold back, keep it minimal, live like it’s temporary?

Or do you give in, decorate every corner, let it hold pieces of you, even if you know you won’t take them back?

I’ve done both.

I’ve lived in rooms that never knew me. And in homes that held too much of me. And I still don’t have an answer.

Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe the point isn’t to choose between staying and leaving. Maybe it’s this…

To keep building a home anyway.
Even if it’s temporary.
Even if it breaks a little every time.

Because somewhere between the packing and the leaving,
You realise it was never just about the house.

It was about who you became in it.

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