It’s late and I’m sitting on my bed with my phone in my lap, scrolling but not really seeing anything. I think about the way I breathe when I’m alone—how I let my shoulders drop, how my chest feels less armored. I don’t do this around everyone, not even most people I know. There’s a softness I keep for myself, a queer little exhale that says, yeah, this is my space.
Sometimes I catch myself in the bathroom mirror, face half-lit, and I notice how my mouth looks when I’m not trying to look like anything at all. That’s when I feel most like myself: not performing, not defending, just being. I grew up bracing for the world, but tonight feels different. Like I can let my guard down, just a little. There’s no one here to read me or misread me.
It’s funny how my sense of home isn’t really a place but the feeling of not needing to explain. I used to think I’d find it somewhere else—some new city, some new group of people. But right now, it’s just me, sitting cross-legged, scrolling past memes and group chats, feeling a little tender and a little amused by how dramatic my hair looks in this lighting.
I don’t have a big realization, just a quiet one: maybe this is enough. Maybe I don’t need to be louder or smaller or more certain. Maybe breathing softly is its own kind of home. I like that. I can hold that for tonight.