The Person I Became Between Two Homes

A serene home, lit with hues of golden sunlight piercing through the mullioned windows, wrapped the room in a warm, cosy blanket. Every nook and corner of the home echoed the childish bickering of my twin brother, followed by the stern advice of our parents. I was never a person of too many words; rather, I was consumed by a plethora of thoughts. However, being quiet never dulled my happiness. From the people at home and in the neighbourhood to the crowd at school, everyone watched me grow alongside my family. This sense of familiarity, of growing up surrounded by people and places that knew me, became a big part of the girl I grew into.

Over the years, my life at home settled into a rhythm of its own. Mornings began with a race against my brother to get ready for the school bus, followed by amusing bus rides where not a second was mundane. Unlike most of the children, I adored going to school because it was a place I knew inside out. I knew every person, from teachers to canteen staff, every student and even every word on the signboards hanging on the sturdy, stained school walls. I never had to wonder how I would fit in because I was already surrounded by people who knew me. My friends had grown alongside me, and I was content with my small, close circle. I never had to start from scratch, introduce myself or prove who I was; familiarity had already done that for me.

Lunch break was when school stopped feeling like school. It was the time we shared home-cooked food with each other, ate from the same plate, had unfiltered conversations and uncontrollable laughter. The evenings at home had their own familiar rhythm too. I sank into my usual corner of the sofa, the spot that had somehow always been mine and sneaked in quick evening naps. Although the almost perfectly peaceful evenings usually got interrupted by my brother’s humorless jokes, I tucked back into sleep on my cushy mattress, feeling at ease knowing I would be doing the same routine the next day. This very feeling of familiarity was the home, my home, that I grew up in for the first 17 years of my life.

Then the university journey had to start. I got to come to Manchester and start my big girl life. Moving out of the rhythm I had grown up living split my heart between curiosity and hesitation. I was left with two opposite feelings. One pushed me forward because I was simply curious about what lay beyond the familiarity, while the other held me back because it meant stepping away from the comfort that had shaped me for so long. Nevertheless, here I was in Manchester, starting a life with no familiar faces, in a place that was a house long before it felt like home.

This past year in Manchester had its own whirlwind of experiences and slow-burn moments. My home here was cosy too, but of a different kind: the cold pressing against the windows, the muted light inside, and the quiet comfort of exploring a new life on my own. I no longer had my brother to cause chaos with but somehow found myself in the middle of university work chaos instead. University was a clean slate where I could try things differently, not because I was unhappy with who I was, but because I was curious about who I could become. I began meeting new people, talking about unfamiliar topics, trying new foods, going on solo coffee dates, and taking evening walks alone. I went from knowing every person and every word on signboards at school to using Google Maps just to find my way around university. Even lunchtime, once the most memorable part of my school days, became simply grabbing a snack from Tesco.

Are these moments the key reason I didn’t regret my decision to move abroad and build a second home? Definitely not.

There were late night study sessions, nerves walking into a lecture alone, converting kilometres to miles and INR to GBP, gathering the courage to approach someone, and the dopamine boost when they turned out to be some of my best companions through first year. There was also the tinge of disappointment, and a whole lot of maturity, when relationships didn’t work out as I thought they would. I was learning to handle things I had never had to before, from managing my own responsibilities to thinking more seriously about my future. The list, really, is endless.

Besides, there were the unexpected treasures I found along this new rollercoaster ride. I received a scholarship without even applying for one, convinced I would not get it if I enrolled. I celebrated my 18th birthday in the dreamiest way possible with people I had bonded with within just a few months. I went on my first ever girls’ trip to London and lived those days to the fullest.

There were plenty of small instances that made me like this version of myself. Not because I did everything right in my first year, but because I gave myself room to try, stumble and discover.

Yet beneath all the excitement was a quiet feeling I couldn’t quite place. The more I started becoming this new person in Manchester, the more I found myself breaking out of silence, exploring the late-night life, making the first moves to approach professors and seniors, building connections and thinking about the future of my career. And the more I did, the more I began to feel like I was living a double life, a person so different from the one I used to be. Perhaps there was a tiny bit of guilt attached to this change. Not necessarily “I am being fake; this is not who I am.”, more like, if I could be this person in Manchester, why couldn’t I be her at home? And if I was so different here, which version of me was actually the real one? It was not that I was unhappy with the version of me here. In fact, Manchester made me happy in a way I didn’t expect, and that happiness made me question the person I had been before.

Maybe I had been looking at it all wrong. I wasn’t becoming someone else. I was discovering parts of myself that life had never asked me to use before. At my home in India, I was surrounded by people who already knew me. Conversations came easily, routines were familiar, and I rarely thought about how to approach someone new or find my place in a room. Manchester made me do those things. Every conversation I initiated, every unfamiliar person I approached and every situation I navigated taught me something, not how to become a different person, but how to bring out a side of myself I had never needed before. This whole process of shifting and exploring may have made me feel like I had two very different versions of myself, but I wasn’t living two lives, and there certainly wasn’t a true or fake version. I was simply learning how to carry one life between two very different places I call home. I didn’t change into someone else. I expanded.