A home is more than a physical shelter. According to Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, an interior design scholar who has studied space, identity, and refugee experiences, homes are where people create “order, shape intentions, form dreams, face adversity, rethink obligations, and relish in their rights.”¹ It is at home where life attains significance through gatherings in which friends and family come together to share stories, meals, and spend time with one another.² Homes are, at their best, “peace[ful]” sites where identity is constructed and nurtured.³ The power of identity construction in the material home can be translated to the immaterial building of the home, through the intimacy of one’s interpersonal relationships, whether that be with their family, friends, or romantic partners. The metaphorical home is built of people with whom you share your innermost world.

Sharing the parts of ourselves that make our inner world is not always easy or pleasurable. To quote Kaylee Friedman, a psychotherapist with a dedicated Instagram following, “Our inner world consists of interesting, positive, and inspiring stories, but it also includes struggle, pain, and grief.”⁴ Continuing, she states, what I find most striking of all: “If we cannot share it all, we cannot feel closely connected.”⁵ This resonated with me most because I’ve always felt like an outsider in my family and friendships, in the sense that I don’t feel truly close to anyone because I’ve never truly shared.

Reading Friedman’s post caused me to go on a deep self-reflection to understand why it is that I never shared. In doing so, I found that my inability to connect and share stemmed from verbal abuse from my older sisters when I was growing up. The verbal abuse primarily consisted of telling me to “kill myself.” What I remember most vividly is a car ride on my way to my first day of first grade when my dad dropped his sunglasses and he asked me to pass them to him. When I did so, I thought, Well, if I was dead, who would pass my dad his sunglasses when they fell? The verbal abuse came from my two older sisters, who were five and seven years older than me, and continued for five years. I didn’t tell anyone about it.

Fast forward to when I was about eleven, I verbalized my suicidal thoughts, and immediately, I was pulled out of school because I was a “danger to myself and to others.” To go back to school, I had to be cleared by several therapists. My parents didn’t understand why I, at such a young age, wanted, or at least thought about, taking my own life—and what’s shocking is that they didn’t ask me. Sometimes I like to think if they had just asked me, I would have told them the truth, or then again maybe I wouldn’t have. I was eventually cleared and went back to school. I pretended as if nothing happened.

Since then, opening up to people has been exceptionally hard for me to do. I always viewed sharing my more difficult experiences as “whining” or “complaining.”⁶ I saw sharing my struggles with my friends as “complaining” or “pointless,” as I felt that venting would make me a burden.⁷ What I didn’t see then is that sharing your inner world is about building intimacy with the people around you, and without that, you’ll never really connect with people that you care about.⁸

This power of connection, intimacy, and vulnerability through one’s interpersonal relationships manifested in the season 2 finale of Euphoria, in an exchange between childhood best friends, Rue and Lexi. In speaking about the passing of Rue’s father, Rue tells Lexi, “I think what they’re actually saying is that you gotta give it a reason. You gotta give all this shit a reason. Because I don’t wanna hold on to this forever. I can’t, I can’t hold on to it forever.”⁹ This quote particularly spoke to me as I’m now starting to feel ready to share my more difficult experiences, with both myself and my friends. I’m also feeling ready to let go of forcing myself to maintain a relationship with my sisters.

A home, both in the physical and metaphorical sense, is a place of peace where you feel comfortable enough to be vulnerable. This intimate relationship is best facilitated through one’s support system, which is composed of people who provide you emotional support. Therefore, one’s interpersonal relationships can be, in a sense, a homeplace. This home place that I seek through a support system can only be attained through intimacy, vulnerability, and honesty. And the intimacy of shared connection through friendship will provide me with the immaterial home I need to do so.

1. Tasoulla Hadjiyanni, The Right to Home: Exploring How Space, Culture, and Identity Intersect with Disparities (Palgrave, 2019), 1.
2. Hadjiyanni, The Right to Home:” 1.
3. Hadjiyanni, The Right to Home,” 1.
4. Kaylee Friedman [@kayleerosetherapy], “Our inner world consists of interesting, positive, and inspiring stories, but it also includes struggle, pain, and grief,” February 23, 2022, Instagram.
5. Friedman [@kayleerosetherapy], “Our inner world.”
6. Friedman [@kayleerosetherapy], “Our inner world.”
7. Friedman [@kayleerosetherapy], “Our inner world.”
8. Friedman [@kayleerosetherapy], “Our inner world.”
9. “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name,” Euphoria, season 2, episode 8, written and directed by Sam Levinson, aired February 27, 2022, on HBO.