“I have spent almost a decade watching life happen around me instead of through me. For years, I felt like I was standing still while the world around me kept moving. Friends were getting jobs, getting married, building lives with confidence. And I kept wondering why I could not take even one steady step forward.

But my story begins much earlier.

I grew up as the child who was praised for everything. The model son. The boy everyone proudly pointed to. Then, at sixteen, I was suddenly sent to boarding school. For the first time in my life, I had to be alone. That was the moment everything split into two versions of me. One was the scared boy who cried every night because he missed home. The other was the boy trying to learn how to survive on his own.

That duality never left me. I grew up knowing how to be strong and terrified at the same time. How to crave people yet feel lonely even in a crowd. How to want independence but freeze every time I had to make a decision.

After college, I imagined freedom. Instead, my life became a long corridor of expectations. Government exams, coaching centres, interviews, courses. I kept carrying dreams that were never mine. Everyone had an opinion about what I should do. And I kept trying to force myself into paths that felt nothing like me.

For a long time, I truly believed that I was the problem. Every failure felt like a personal shame. Every time I came back home defeated, every time I avoided trying again, I felt like I was disappointing the whole world. Slowly, I became smaller. I became quieter. I became a version of myself that even I could not recognise.

Life at home became survival. Not because my parents lacked love. They love me deeply. But their love came with their own fears and anxieties. I absorbed all of it. I began overthinking every step, worrying more about what my father might say than the actual problem in front of me.

And then, in 2021, something shifted. Our house was being renovated, and for the first time, I handled something big on my own. I took care of the entire process. It was chaotic and emotional, but somewhere in the middle of that responsibility, I felt a strange strength. My parents were proud. For a moment, I was proud of myself too.

But life does not move in straight lines.

The years that followed, 2022 and 2023, became my darkest period. I lost all confidence. I isolated myself from friends. I stopped pursuing opportunities. I stayed inside my room, surviving one day at a time. My world shrank to four walls and the noise inside my own head.

2024 was quieter. Not a transformation year, but a healing one. I slowly began standing up again. I understood myself better. I forgave myself for the years I had lost. I made peace with the broken parts without expecting them to disappear overnight.

Time kept moving. And suddenly, it was 2025. I was twenty nine. And I realised that if I did not move now, I might never move at all.

Around this time, something unexpected happened. Sometimes, it takes just one person to remind you of the version of yourself that you thought had disappeared. That belief came when I had none left for myself. Her faith became the borrowed courage I needed to take my first step again.

I also finally began therapy. Not years earlier, but just months before everything changed. It did not fix my life overnight, but it gave me enough clarity to choose myself for the first time.

So in September 2025, after years of standing still, I finally moved. I came to Chennai. Not with a job. Not with a plan. Not to prove anything. I came simply because Chennai makes me feel like I can breathe. Because Chennai gives me space to make mistakes. Because Chennai allows me to exist without judgment.

In the last few months, this city has changed me quietly. The people I met, the songs I listened to, the theatres I sat alone in, the small lanes I walked through, all of them gave me courage in simple ways.

I met people who reminded me of my forgotten parts. I listened to music that felt like small homecomings. I saw films that made me feel less alone. I walked through streets that allowed me to meet versions of myself I had never seen before.

I may live in many cities in the future, but this Chennai phase is my turning point. These months have been the first pages of a story I am finally writing with honesty. With awareness. With my own hands on the wheel.

I do not have a job yet. I do not have life figured out. I am twenty nine, almost thirty, still rebuilding from scratch. But I am not ashamed anymore. For the first time, I feel like I am living honestly.

I no longer search for home in the places I escape to or the people I cling to. Because now I know that home is wherever I feel at peace with myself.

I am not the scared boy anymore. I am becoming the man who takes care of him. I am someone who finally took the first step. And maybe that was all I ever needed.

Home is not always the place you grow up in. Sometimes, home is the city where you finally feel yourself again. Sometimes, home is the version of you that rises after years of silence. Sometimes, home is simply the courage to begin.”