There’s a photo of me lying in a cradle in India—eyes wide, one golden kolusu twisted halfway around my ankle, the room behind me still whole and mine, though not for long.

Memory begins after that. The pale beige carpet of our apartment in Arizona. The lawn that stretched further than I could run. Fireflies pulsing in the dark like Morse code I never learned to read.

We moved a lot. Texas, then California. In Texas, I remember the taste of air after rain, how worms covered the sidewalks. In California, I knew the neighbor’s dog’s name but not the neighbor’s. I liked things that stayed in place: my routines, my bear, my blue jacket. But I also understood, early, that not everything comes with warning.

The jacket in question was light blue and a size too big. Polyester. I think we got it off of the Ross Dress for Less clearance rack.

(Of course it had to be Ross—you can take the family out of India, but you can’t take India out of the family.)

I wore it long past usefulness, through heatwaves and growth spurts, sleeves sagging over my hands. I kept mushroom-shaped erasers in my pockets. Notes I wrote to no one. I wasn’t sentimental then, only attached. There’s a difference.

At eight, we moved again. Illinois. Colder. Quieter. The kind of place where the sky felt too close and too far at the same time. The moving truck didn’t come for two days, and I cried on the carpeted stairs while my parents unpacked silence from the car.

School felt like static. I didn’t know what to say, so I said less. My jacket, once familiar, became something else—something other kids noticed.

Do you even wash that thing?

I did. But that didn’t matter, not to me or to them. I folded it into a drawer that night and never wore it again.

That was the start of the substitutions. The bear went in a box. The erasers disappeared. I started carrying lip balm, mascara, wired headphones tangled in the bottom of my backpack. I wore t-shirts with band names I couldn’t read and laughed too loudly at things I didn’t find funny. There’s a skill to passing through new spaces without being marked by them. I learned how to carry myself without drawing a line around it.

High school made it harder to disappear. My face turned on me. My skin bloomed and scarred in cycles. I learned the angles that made me look thinner in photos, how to pose like I wasn’t afraid of the camera. I covered walls and mirrors with post-it notes. I hid under foundation and oversized sweaters.

There was a boy I loved then—still do. I let him touch my face in the back of his parents’ Toyota Highlander, careful, like he was memorizing a version of me I couldn’t see. He said I looked different without makeup. I said I knew. I think I laughed. I was seventeen, trying to make peace with a body I still felt like a guest in, and he never asked me to explain any of it. That mattered more than I can say.

It wasn’t self-hatred exactly. Just a quiet leaving. I wasn’t sure where I’d gone, only that I wanted to come back.

College was supposed to be a destination. I chose it this time. Brought less. Packed intentionally. But even the chosen can feel foreign. I got lost in buildings that all looked the same. I forgot which side of campus I lived on. The future started to thin out, like a photo that wouldn’t load. I spent entire days nodding, pretending I knew where I was going.

No one tells you how strange it feels to be unknown again. To be unspoken for. I missed being understood without explanation. I smiled too little. I ate even less. I waited for the shape of myself to return, even as I reached a weight I hadn’t been since childhood.

Eventually, I learned the shape of things. Which buildings to study in. Which paths were less busy during the afternoon exodus from gen-eds. How to navigate my new home without always checking. I made a few friends who didn’t ask for a version of me. I started writing again because I needed a place to hear my own thoughts out loud.

Still, the feeling never leaves completely. That sense of floating just above your life. Of trying to orient yourself without coordinates. I’m twenty years old now. I graduate in December. The language is changing again: resumes, gap years, LinkedIn updates. The MCAT. Applying to graduate school. Maybe forgetting it all and leaving for the Himalayas. I nod. I answer emails. I try not to flinch.

Every day I wake up and still don’t know where I’m going.

I’ve stopped trying to hold it all together. These days it’s enough to hold a few small things: the names of people I trust. A playlist for walking alone. The weight of jimikis swinging from my ears as I move. I hold on to what reminds me who I am, even when I’m still in the process of becoming.

The jacket is long gone. The bear is still with me, its home on the far side of my bed. I know how they both felt in my hands. How they made the unfamiliar feel navigable. Not safe, just known.

That’s all I’ve ever asked for.