02. In the Middle of a Desert

Do you know that feeling?

Being left alone in the middle of a desert.

No matter how loudly you call out, your voice reaches no one.

From the time I was ten, I used to get that feeling — the sensation of standing alone in a desert I had never actually been to. If I ever go to a real desert someday, I would think, I wonder if it would feel exactly like this. I told myself I'd find out one day.

Then one day, I found myself alone in an emergency room in a city that wasn't mine. When I was asked for an emergency contact, the desert came back. I couldn't think of a single name. Not family. Not a friend. Not anyone. My mind went completely blank, and I sat there, unable to answer. That was when I felt it again — oh. This old isolation is still here. Still this big. Time had passed, but the isolation hadn't gone anywhere. It had just been waiting.

The truth is, I've never felt a strong sense of belonging anywhere.I didn't think of it as a problem. If anything, I believed it was the reason I could do what I did — pick up and move to a country where I knew no one, build a life in a place that was entirely unfamiliar. Not being tied anywhere felt like freedom.

Then one day, I found something I hadn't been looking for. Two things, to be exact, that had never existed in my life. One: I had never felt stable. Two: I had never truly felt safe. Oh. So that's why I could never feel like I belonged. That's why I kept moving, kept leaving, kept starting over.

When I looked at my life clearly, I saw it: I had a house. But I never had a home. A physical space to stay in — yes, always. But a place that felt like shelter? A place where I could rest, where something inside me could finally exhale? That had never existed. I cried. Hard.

The memory of that day is still vivid. Things that had never made sense began, for the first time, to find their place — the ways I had learned to protect myself, the questions that had gone unanswered for years, the patterns I had been repeating without knowing why.

If I were to compare myself to a tree — for so long, I kept asking myself why I couldn't settle in one place the way other trees do. Why I kept being pulled somewhere else. Why staying never felt like an option.

And then I understood.

My roots had been cut. I just didn't know it until now.

‘Safety and Stability, Two Things I Never Had’ by Nami Park