I'm an expert at leaving.

For the last 18 years, I've moved every year.

At 17, I moved out of my mother’s house and into a college dorm. The next four summers were a ritual of moving everything out just to move everything back in. College was four years of leaving and returning, easing my way into leaving for good. 

After graduation, I moved to DC for a directing apprenticeship program. The program included free housing in a fully furnished apartment. I lived in a house with 9 other twenty-somethings trying to find their footing in the real world. All of the furniture was from Ikea and my bedroom had no door.

The next year moved into a studio apartment provided by my University job. This was the first time I had ever lived alone. Living alone was the promised land. I got to meet myself for the first time. In the sacred space of solitude, I got to learn who I was and choose who I wanted to become.

The year after that, I remembered I was an artist and I quit the University job. I started working at a coffee shop and moved into an apartment with my then-boyfriend and a mutual friend. It was my first time living with boys. (I do not recommend it.)

At 24, I got real brave and started taking leaps of faith.

I broke up with the boyfriend and decided to move to New York with a friend. That summer, I slept on a couch in a basement lovingly referred to as “the dank den”. I was in my “fuck it” era. I had the time of my life. 

Then I moved to Brooklyn. My friend found this corner apartment surrounded by trees and convinced me that we would make it a bohemian haven from the chaos of the city. My room was the size of a twin bed, but my rent was $450 so again, fuck it. We later discovered that the apartment was being illegally occupied by our landlord who had stolen a vacant apartment, fixed it up, and put up a flyer charging rent.

Wild.

The next year, I remembered I was a writer so I flew across the country to pursue my dreams of writing at an MFA program at Cal Arts. I found a $500 bedroom for rent on Craigslist and moved into a 2-bedroom apartment with a single mom and her kid. We never spent more than 15 minutes together the entire time I lived there. I had no furniture other than a twin mattress on the floor. I put a piece of fabric over a cardboard box to make a bedside table.  I survived off of spaghetti, free bagels, and rice and beans.

my grad school room featuring a mock-up of a mural idea that was never brought to life

The next year, I remembered that my “dreams of writing” didn’t require me to spend $40,000 on tuition and survive solely off of spaghetti, free bagels, and rice and beans. So I dropped out of grad school and moved to LA. My partner at the time found a room for rent in the home of an aspiring actor. We became kinda friends and hosted queer clothing swaps and dinner parties. This was the first time home became something other than just a place to sleep. 

The next year — three days before my 28th birthday — I got a call that my Dad had cancer. I moved home to Charlotte,  North Carolina to take care of him, and spent the next year living out of a suitcase in my mother’s house.

The year after that, I moved back to New York (against my better judgment) to try and build a life with my lover. Oh, the things love makes us do. We got an apartment together and I learned that love isn’t the only thing needed to make a relationship work.  We broke up. I moved out.  

Then, my sister died. And 6 months later, my Dad. So I moved back to Charlotte, knowing that my family needed me. Knowing that I needed to come home.

Every year until now, I have moved.

I moved into my current home last year. And I pray — dear God, I pray — to stay a while.

My friend Jezz Chung says, “We get better at anything we practice.”  I’ve practiced the choreography of packing, wrapping, loading, unloading so many times, I’m masterful at it. 

I’ve left so many times — and had so little for so long — that I have had to learn over and over again how to let go.

And I’m still learning.

Just yesterday I finally got rid of an outdoor patio table and two metal chairs that had been left behind by the previous tenant. I knew good and well that having a heavy ass patio table and two outdoor chairs in my kitchen didn’t make any sense, but I romanticized the vision of my home overflowing with guests someday, and the table “coming in handy.”   

Spoiler alert — it did not come in handy. 

It was bulky and awkward. It didn’t belong. It wasn’t mine. It didn’t feel like me.

So I posted it on Facebook Marketplace and within 48 hours, it was gone. 

Suddenly, the kitchen was transformed. It was an instant reminder that things carry energy. Every object has a frequency — a vibrational song that it sings. The table was a beautiful note, but it did not harmonize with the rest of my home.

This morning, as I stood in the empty space, I realized that this table didn’t harmonize because it was the one thing in my home that I did not choose. 

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me circa 1995

As a kid, my parents and grandparents exclusively furnished their homes from items found on the side of the road, things we inherited from family and friends, and things that were on sale.

My childhood homes were full of mismatched items that had been salvaged and repurposed.  Everything was functional, but nothing was intentional. 

I craved cohesion. I longed for order. I envied my friends whose homes were filled with Rooms2Go sets in monotone color palettes.

I learned very quickly that acquiring things is not the same as choosing things. 

Choice is personal. Choice is based on a feeling.  Choice is the act of deliberately picking the option that sparks the most joy. 

Design comes from the Latin word designare, which means to “mark out, point out; devise; choose.”

To choose.

Designing my home is a practice of deliberate choice-making. I choose how I want to feel, and then I choose objects that support that feeling. 

This is also how I live my life: I identify the desired feelings, and then I curate the experiences that will help me feel the feelings. 

When I choose something, I fall in love with it. My body says yes. I feel a tingle, a spark, a true connection.  

Designing my home is to fall in love a thousand times.

After almost 20 years of moving every year, I’m finally able to settle in.

I am learning what it feels like to be in a place without planning to leave it. I get to I get to own more than what fits in two suitcases. I don’t have to confine my energy to a bedroom. I get to spread my aura out — wide and unapologetically. I don’t have to compromise my vision to accommodate someone else’s preferences or desires. 

I don’t have to always be making an exit strategy.

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In the last few weeks, I’ve felt reawakened by the process of creating a long-term vision for my home. I’m making space not just for my current self, but for all the versions of me to come.

Decorating my home is reawakening lessons I have yet to master:

• How to liberate myself from lack mentality

• How to not compare myself to others

• How to honor my desires without self-judgement or shame

• How to not rush the process

• How to be grateful for what I have while pursuing what I don’t

I’m listening, paying attention, letting it integrate as I settle in.

I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, take a look at my vision board.

My friend, if there are projects you have been meaning to complete in your home, complete them.  If there are things you need to release, release them. You will not regret the time spent. You will not regret the peace you feel. May you remember the unmatched pleasure of transforming an idea into a reality. May you breathe deeper in the empty space. May you feel all the way settled in.

And so it is,
Jamila