Hi,

      You'll probably think badly of me for leaving, but I have to go. I hope this gives you some sort of closure.

I didn't leave because you were bad. I didn't leave because I regret it. I didn't leave because I had somewhere to be or someone to see. I left because I was scared. The smile of a satisfied slumber that I found upon my face as I woke was enough to tell me to run. But that was before I even set my eyes on you. The grace of a smile playing against your soft, cherry lips; the slight flutter of your eyelids evidence of your pleasant dreams; the soft curve of your hip the resting place for the palm of my rugged hand, whilst your own lay - entwined - against my chest; the mass of tousled, sandy waves spread across the pillow, glowing in the diffident light of dawn. Our legs tangled in a skein of our predicament: the embrace in which I found us almost illicit for our fortuity.

But was it fortuitous? Or was this meant to happen? Questions like this seeped into my brain and flooded it with hope for the future, and I got scared. Looking at you in that moment, seeing your face without the worry lines and your muscles in a state of relaxation sent me spiralling into a world of what ifs. What if I could relieve your stresses and worries every day? What if you woke up and our conversation continued into the late hours of the evening? What if, at the end, we said our goodbyes but it didn't feel like it was the last time? What if... What if I didn't want it to be the last time?

The overwhelming feeling of domesticity combined with the way our bodies lay intertwined like two pieces of a puzzle compelled me to leave. Who knows? - this could be one of the biggest mistakes of my life... But it's better wondering what could have been than venturing into something new and coming out hurt, ending up in the same bar with the same reason, and yet another night like the last.

It's hard to define the happiest moment of my life. I could say it was the time my friends surprised me with presents for my birthday, or the time when my mum came home with a new kitten I had asked for, or even my first time on an aeroplane.

I would be lying though.

The happiest moment of my life - although you could also define it as the saddest - was when I realised that I didn't have a home. No, it wasn't that I lost my house, for I still had one of those, it was that the house I was living in, well, it wasn't my home at all. My home was undefinable. If I found myself at home in a library: so be it. Behind Seljalandsfoss in Iceland? Or maybe even halfway up sólheimajökull? The point is - it didn't matter. I had finally realised why I had been feeling so lost. The forests, lakes and sunsets, the empty streets, fields and roads... Wherever life decided to take me on my journey was where I would call my home.

I felt so free.

It was the happiest moment of my life - standing next to people I didn't like, people whose company I enjoyed, and even some people I loved - realising that I could go anywhere I liked and find a home. A home inside myself or inside someone else. I could take someone all around the world and never look back with homesickness. We could just make a new home for ourselves, maybe even in each other.

It was a powerful experience, but I didn't tell anyone. In fact, this is the first time revealing it at all. But it was the happiest moment of my life, and words can't express the true happiness I felt at that moment.

My only wish is that someday, the place I realised this can become my new home - even if it's only for a little while.

It is innapropriate,

  they say,

        to love in a place full of death.

It is in a place full of death,

  they said,

        that we should mourn for those we have lost.

It is in mourning,

  they know,

        that we come together as one.

It is in coming together,

  they see,

        that we all suffer the same – we all bleed the same.

It is in suffering,

  they tell,

        that we face consequences of our sins

              and bleed for what we have done.

We bleed,

     and we suffer,

          and we bleed once more,

               but we do it together,

                    together as one.

My desire for travel was getting out of hand. I would be walking down the street in my local town, jogging down the stairs in my own home, and suddenly I would want - no - need to be somewhere else. I thought I was dreaming when the day came. The day when I woke up and found myself in dense emerald forest thousands of miles from home. But I wasn't. I was right there, basking in the Caribbean heat - bliss. Once I realised, I immediately thought of my family. Where would they think I had gone? So I thought long and hard about a way home, and as I noticed the tingle of my skin becoming less intense, I opened my eyes to the familiar walls of the room where I had spent years dreaming of where I had just been. I knew I could go wherever I wanted to, and as a family with little money, this could be life-changing. But power changed me; power got the better of me. Knowing that I could have anything I wanted drove this feeling inside me, this person I didn't even know I was capable of being. Then I stole. I stole from the people just like me - even those worse-off than me!

And just like that, I had become someone just as bad as those I resented before that fateful day.