Walking into the high school on my first day, the hallways seemed outrageously crowded and labyrinthine. I walked with my older sister, who was familiar with the school鈥檚 layout, to try and find the classroom numbers located on my schedule. While strolling, my sister came across many of her friends, keeping conversation with them while I walked silently next to them awkwardly. Whenever I asked my sister for directions to a classroom, she would respond with a quick 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know.鈥澛� I truly felt like I wasn鈥檛 a part of anything. I had nobody to walk with. I was all alone.

Throughout the months I鈥檝e been in school, I have had to hold onto beliefs of independence, autonomy, and self-reliance as I had learned them through online school and lockdowns, but it has been very hard to cling onto such beliefs when contrasted with the intimacies I yearn for. Now, instead of asking my friends for homework answers, I do them all myself. Instead of persuading my friends to tell me what the quiz questions were, I study hard and do well through my own efforts.聽

Maybe by confronting the loneliness I had always been afraid of, I was able to learn the capability to make my own happiness. Maybe.

Eventually, being in the same home every day was affecting me more than I believed. My family was eating dinner together, and my sister simply asked me how my day was. The desire to scream was overwhelming. I was unable to engage in simple conversation without the need to yell. Was this a result of months cooped up inside? Later that night I attempted to befriend my sisters to prove to myself that I could spend time with these people that I love dearly. This was a failed attempt. I succumbed to anger, running to my room ashamed of the painful words that came out of my mouth, and am unable to write them now. As I stepped downstairs a bit later, I overheard my sister on a Zoom with two friends. I heard her say, 鈥淚 think Sasha is struggling more than she thinks. She says she loves quarantine, but she is mad all the time and probably needs to see her friends.鈥� Hearing these words led me to face a reality that I was avoiding immensely. I was not being my best self, although I had convinced myself that I was.聽

I ran back to my room, determined to work through my anger. I pulled out my journal from an unorganized pile of papers, notebooks, and folders, and wrote descriptions of all my angry outbursts as well as possible reasons for each. I was stressed about my parents鈥� health, I was tired of Zoom, I was scared of the possibility of my sisters leaving. I asked myself, 鈥渨hy didn鈥檛 they want to be with me as much as I wanted to be with them?鈥� I knew these factors were affecting me, but I also knew that it would take more than identifying them to stop these mean words from bubbling over.聽

The next night, my mother and I each pulled out a guitar to practice. Unexpectedly, we ended up playing together, and the three other members of my family joined in to sing. It felt like a cry of pain that turned into an appreciation for being together. After we finished, my parents headed to their bedroom and I was left alone with my sister. It was my time to apologize: 鈥淕uys, this is really hard for me, but I am so sorry for being so rude. You don鈥檛 deserve it. I just want to spend time with you.鈥澛� Both of my sisters responded with a hug. I finally understood that they too wanted to be with me.

These months were difficult, but learning to appreciate my family allowed me to grow. May we all cope with difficult times through the company of our loved ones.

Our house stood at the top of an incline, with a balcony in the back, opening to a beautiful view down the green, tree-covered hill. I loved this view because it made the house seem closer to nature. Meanwhile, my siblings cared only for the minuses which the house had and thus I was forced to fight them in convincing my father to buy our house.聽聽

This struggle over what house my family should buy lasted for several months, all the way from late spring to August. During these months I continued my attempts to persuade my family into buying our house. I managed to convince my mother on the basis that we grew too much in the house to simply leave it, and also I managed to convince my oldest brother to be neutral since he will spend most of his time somewhere else anyway. Yet the whole situation seemed to worsen for me because my family found another house, a new one, in Leonia with an equivalent price as ours. That house suited all of my family members and, unlike our house, it did not require costly repairs and renovations.聽

As the time for a decision neared, my father, figuring that such a decision must be consulted on with all of the family, began talking to me. I said, 鈥淚 would most definitely choose to live in this house. I already got used to this house despite all of its problems. This house has a beautiful view of the outside world, and not only do I actually feel free in this house, out of all the houses we have seen in Leonia, this is the only one with windows large enough to breathe freely and ceilings high enough to stretch without hitting my head.鈥�

In the end, I received what I wanted, the house in which I lived for practically half my life was now ours completely, and there was nothing else that would separate me from it.聽

In the end, of course, it wasn鈥檛 a fair fight. All the others were just houses. This was our home.

Soon enough, we were Facetiming and talking every day. My parents were still strict with COVID rules so seeing V. was hard. Now V was moving 40 minutes away. It felt as if I was going to lose my best friend.However, V and I became closer than ever when she moved to her new town. Our favorite hang out spot was in her new town: Boonton at the Bombers football games. Our bond only grew stronger. I can鈥檛 even imagine a life without her as my best friend.

I decided I had to write her a letter because we had a week of arguments. I printed the letter and took it to her house the weekend I was sleeping over for my birthday. V and I went into her bedroom alone and she read the letter. I poured my heart out. The last sentence I wrote was 鈥淵ou. Are. My. Home.鈥� Those words are the most honest words that I have ever written. As V finished reading the letter, she stood up and gave me a hug. I will never forget this hug.

鈥淚 love you so much Dylan. I can鈥檛 imagine my life without you. I am not ever going to leave,鈥� she said.

Having a home doesn鈥檛 always mean having a roof over your head. It can mean that you have someone who makes you feel the safest you could ever possibly feel and the tranquility of being yourself.

Home is not a definite place, but it can be a definite person.

I was a very timid person even before all of this. I was not able to handle social situations that well so I would overthink everything. I wasn鈥檛 funny, I wasn鈥檛 cool, and I wasn鈥檛 popular. People knew me and I knew them but I wasn鈥檛 that important. I was worried I was going to make a bad joke. I was worried people were going to look at me weird. I thought to myself when looking at others, 鈥渉ow is he so funny?鈥� and 鈥渉ow is he so cool?鈥�

I knew that I was missing something but I didn’t know what it was. I was trying my hardest, but no matter what I always felt behind.

Then COVID hit. I realized that everyone is in the same place. I wasn’t behind anyone. In fact I felt as though I was ahead. I treated the time in quarantine as a time to better myself, to 鈥渃atch up鈥� to all those who I thought were ahead of me. I wanted to return as a new and improved person, someone that no one had seen before. I wanted to enjoy life the same way my popular peers did. I worked and worked until I got what I wanted.

The best part was when the 2021-2022 school year started, I was a completely different person. I was able to handle myself. I was able to make people laugh. I was able to form my own friend groups and not be the guy on the side. It鈥檚 because of COVID that I got this opportunity to better myself – in the end, the world had to stop for me to get ahead.

I was fully ready to bury the subject deep down. I was confused and frustrated that the answer hadn鈥檛 hit me yet. However, everything leveled out after I finally logged onto social media. Before quarantine, I had hated social media, thinking that it was toxic and dangerous for teenagers. But after being isolated for so long with nothing but my idiot brothers to entertain me, I had a new perspective. And, contradictory to every bit of common sense I had, it was surprisingly good for my situation. There was an increase of positive LGBT representation in the media, and I saw several people sharing similar experiences to mine.聽 It relieved me knowing I was not alone, and it was nice to feel seen in a world where I couldn鈥檛 step outside my house.

It ended up taking me over a year to come to terms with my gender identity, finally coming out as transgender in September of 2021. It took a while, but that time was all we had during COVID –聽 eventually I learned that I didn鈥檛 need to rush into making a decision when I have my whole life ahead to discover more about myself.

While the pandemic may have caused me to be isolated and alone during one of the most stressful periods of my life, it also caused me to think and explore possibilities I would have never seen if I hadn鈥檛 been given the time to think.

My mother and grandma were planning her once-every-couple-years trip to Indonesia. We couldn鈥檛 all go, of course. Money was scarce, and my sister and I had only met Athai once, back in 2015. Even then, her health had been declining. News of Athailanding in the hospital had become so regular I鈥檇 began thinking nothing of it. I always figured she鈥檇 fight and come back to us, as she always did. Grandma was ready to fly home to Indonesia right away; but flight restrictions made that impossible. We were left with feelings of hopelessness and despair. Athai was dying, and none of us were with her.

My mother hoped some of our relatives would stay by Atai鈥檚 bedside and keep her company. It proved a challenge to find even one person willing to risk their safety to make the trip to Athai鈥檚 near-empty flat. My grandma would give anything to be with her mother in her last moments, yet nobody was willing to wipe a dampened towel across Athai鈥檚 cheek, hold her thin hand, or repay her for all the years of her dedication put into her children.

I chose to bury myself in online classes where I stayed silent and unresponsive. I didn鈥檛 speak a word until six in the evening. I ignored my aunts and sister who worked alongside me at their own tables. We shared a room, some of us shared a bed. I loathed that situation. I trudged along the sidewalk in the hot outdoors suffocating under my mask, footsteps loud in the quiet street. I walked fast and hard, longing to be seen or heard.聽 Everyone is for themselves, and I absolutely hate it. It is a cycle I repeat for months.

My grandma is on the phone, alongside my mother and aunts. I hear grandma say hello. Her quiet, calm, soothing voice comforts her mother. She tells Athaiif God is calling her to come home, then she should, and that they will see each other again someday. Mother later tells me the phone call was encouraged by the pastor who came to see Atai. He鈥檇 asked grandma to give Athaia call and comfort her so that she might rest. This works, because grandma tells me Athai has died the next morning.

It saddens me to know grandma had to say goodbye to her mother over the phone, and even more so when I realized she had to encourage Athai to rest.

I am proud when grandma speaks fondly of when she can go home to Indonesia and visit her mother鈥檚 grave, forced to give a bad goodbye in the belief that there will yet be one more hello.

The swings had a layer of slightly muddy water on them, but I sat down anyway. The water soaked through my sweatpants, the feeling of being outside seeped into my clothes, and I felt the weight of the world coming back to me. The rain water soaked through my mask and stuck to my face, but the feeling wasn鈥檛 uncomfortable or confining, it felt normal.

In the rain, the old COVID life was slowly washing away.

I had been living in the Bronx with my mother and in Queens with my father. I went to school in the Upper West Side as this was a good middle point between my two apartments. Middle school wasn鈥檛 the best period of my life, so I was glad that it was coming to an end, and I could transfer out of the school I was attending.

When New York began to see rising COVID cases, particularly in Queens, my friend Sonia and I thought that the best way of being safe would be to wear latex gloves. Our last day of school was on March 10th, which fell on a Tuesday. That day I had worn a pink dress and had paired it with a jean jacket, and remembered having come home in the best mood because I had spent all of my afternoon out with my friends at the Frederick Douglass Playground a block away from my school. That night, however, my Dean sent an email to the parents. The email stated that they would close the school for two days because a student in our school had come in contact with somebody who knew someone else that had COVID. At this time, any sort of contact with somebody who might have had the virus was a huge deal. They wanted to deep clean the entire building to ensure a safe return to school. Of course, the news that school was closed for two days was the best thing that could have happened.

The two days were extended into the rest of the week, and then it was announced that we would remain closed for another week. After that week passed, they extended the closure until after our Spring Break. Two days eventually turned into the rest of the school year. The school I was attending was private and it wasn鈥檛 the most affordable. With the worry that I may not be able to continue at that school, my mother realized that it might have been time to move to an area that was more affordable.

New York City has always been an expensive city, but with the pandemic, finding a nice neighborhood to move to wasn鈥檛 easy. There were many factors that came into finding a place to move to aside from making sure that there was a nearby school that would provide a good education, such as ensuring that I was still near my father and that my mother could get to work on the East Side. Finding a new house became so difficult that it took us over a year to settle on a place.

The process of finding a new house wasn鈥檛 all that unique for me. I had moved around 8 times, switched schools 4 times, and lived in 3 different countries. I was familiar with what it was like to move, to pack everything up, and leave everyone behind. We spent months looking for a new place to move to until we finally settled on Edgewater, New Jersey. It was right across the Hudson River, only a 30 minute bus from the city, and was a decent distance from my father鈥檚 apartment in Queens. I recall my mother telling me when I got home from school one day that she had found an apartment 鈥渋n a very nice, quiet area.鈥� At first I didn鈥檛 think much of it, I just told her that I was excited to move and start a new life. But then it hit me – New Jersey?

Living in New York, I had gotten used to hearing motorcycles racing on the main road outside my house, the ice cream truck around the corner in the spring and summer, the constant honking because of the city鈥檚 traffic, and so much more. There wasn鈥檛 a time in which it was truly silent around my Bronx apartment. So when my mom told me about the silence, and how little people there were, I realized that this move would be completely different from what I was used to.

Living in New Jersey became a total change for me. I realized that there are barely any buses, and that they only run around every 30 minutes. I found that there wasn鈥檛 a deli or corner shop nearby where I could go get a BLT or an Arizona late at night if I was feeling hungry. My school was so much bigger than what I was used to. Everything felt so extremely different. I had moved before, but this time it left a heavy feeling in my heart. From my living room window, I could see the Manhattan skyline, and found myself sitting at the window wishing that I was one of the little people walking through the streets of Soho.

Because I had moved so much throughout my life, and lived in so many different houses and apartments, I never had an idea of where my 鈥渉ome鈥� was. I didn鈥檛 really feel attached to any place, nor did I feel homesick for any of the places I had lived in. It wasn鈥檛 until I moved to Edgewater that I realized that my home isn鈥檛 a building, but rather a city.

New Jersey is where my house is thanks to COVID. But New York City will always be my home.