Fed & Loved, Always

the sense of home

Wherever I go, I’m fed and loved, always. Wherever I go, I feel at home. 

I just returned to my hometown — and to my sister finally, as she said — after months away for my first European tour. Before the tour, I had been traveling a lot as well, at least way more than I ever did in the past few years. So much so that the whole house now agrees that my time at home can be referred to as simple and short stays rather than me actually living in the house. I believe February has been the only month I fully spent in Abidjan — and with my nuclear family — since this year has started. 

The thing is, weirdly or not, I did not miss it at all. This is not because I don’t like it here or that I'd rather be far away for some dark and suspicious reason, no. I do love my family and I do love being in this bed I saved up for and commissioned myself — adult things — after so long. I absolutely love to hate this city and its traffic and awful drivers. They are my awful drivers and I’ll never trade them.

It’s just that during that time abroad, and even if my clothes were always in a suitcase or even if I was always ready to go to some other places if needed, there was not a second I felt homesick. At least not in a common sense people give to the word.

I never felt like I was missing my home. 

I just got back yes, but it truly feels like I've never left. And that’s probably because to me, home has never been a physical place. It has never been a country or a city or the house I return to after a day out or a gig.

To me, home is probably closer to a feeling than anything else. 

I spent this time away in five different countries. I visited a dozen cities and for a big part of this experience, I was hosted in either hotel rooms — DJs love when breakfast is included, yes please! — or very welcoming and charming Airbnbs or spaces fully dedicated to artists. I’ve been privileged enough to work with kind staff that literally treated me as a jewel (am I flaunting? probably). 

For the most important part of it though, I was welcomed by friends that I had not seen in months or years even. I also spent time with people I had never met or interacted with before, who are now growing to be part of my circle somehow. I was with people that were so eager to have me around and ready to share their own private space with me that I felt like it had always been mine too. In each of those places, I was received with a warm embrace, food on the table and a genuine “please let me know if you need anything okay?"

I had people that I love and appreciate to share meaningful time with, to lay in bed with, to listen to music with. Endless conversations, walks, improvised karaoke sessions, YouTube videos binge watching or just full and so comfortable silences. I had the double of their flat’s keys with me, went grocery shopping with them, cooked with and for them. I even stayed around while they were the ones away. 

In each of those places, I was loved, safe and cared for. I could feel it in the air. In the way we held hands. I could see it in the way I was allowed to take space — respectfully so, of course. I could hear it when we sat down and just talked. When we just laughed. 

I experience this too when I'm here, with my family. when I go over to my sister's room to see what she’s been up to. When she comes to mine just to hug me and leave without closing the door. When we are all chatting in the kitchen. When we are waiting for my mom to give us the go to drink the fruit juice she just came back with. 

That is what home is for me. I am home wherever my people are. Wherever someone is waiting for me. Arms open and smile on their face. Whenever someone decides to put their trust in me and allows me to put mine in them or show me that it is safe for me to do so. Whenever vulnerability and intimacy is found and shared. 

And I know I’m privileged, so privileged, to have this feeling in my heart in all these places — one thing the internet did right by me was to connect me with so many beautiful souls. 

It’s also a privilege to know that home is not somewhere I'm longing to run to. It’s not fixed. It could be anywhere I want. I have the power to cultivate this feeling, wherever I go. To adapt. To build a new home in every space I step in. To connect with people and share my world with them while they share theirs with me. 

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Unfortunately, as home is not a physical place for me, homesickness becomes somehow more difficult to deal with. 

Believe it or not, at the end of the day, I’m not exempt from feeling homesick. It’s just that for me, that state is a less tangible thing. When your home is people, being homesick tastes differently: a smile that now feels forced, an embrace that no longer screams safety – or that you don’t even long for anymore – words that are becoming harder and harder to trust. 

Moving places or flying to another country does not heal this type of wound. 

The feeling doesn't stay in one place and you don’t free yourself from it as soon as you leave. It’s in your heart. It creates a lack, an emptiness, a hole that you also carry wherever you go. Homesickness for me is losing people and connections I never thought I’d lose. And it’s generally a final state. It’s not something I can resolve, something we could “work on a remix” for example — I tried. It’s experiencing grief, not because someone has died, but because while they are well alive, I cannot have access to them anymore. For whatever reason that would be. Homesickness is when all I have left is bittersweet memories and unease. 

How do you move past that? I’m still wondering.

The connections I make now do not erase the pain I felt when losing others. The pain I still feel. They cannot replace them either. It’s not even their role in the first place and that would be unfair anyway. My homesick state is then everlasting. It’s forever. And It’s probably linked to the fact that I have a certain inability to forget things at all – which is very different from living in the past, trust me. Homesickness is then a lingering feeling in my heart that I have to accept and adapt to. Because no matter how much we try, we can’t always avoid separation.

So I lose, I gain and somehow, I maintain the balance.

Subsequently, I am always at home and I’m also always homesick as I live with missing parts of myself. It’s a weird place to be but I’m getting on terms with it. At least I’m trying.

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The ability to be home wherever you are is beautiful. Experiencing humans at their rawest is beautiful. But it also comes with the risk to feel homesick wherever you find yourself as well. And that’s terrible. That can be brutal. 

But, even if we fail sometimes. Even if the home becomes less solid, less durable at times. At least it was standing for a while. At least I felt it. At least we took the risk and we tried. And this is not something I’d ever take for granted.

I will never not be fed and loved.

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