I’ve spent a lot of my life on the move, and sometimes it feels like trying to find yourself in the middle of a house full of boxes and yet another new postcode.

You arrive somewhere new, unpack just enough to get by, and realise you’re not quite sure where “you” landed in the process. You dig through boxes marked “Essentials” and find things you barely remember packing. Somewhere between old paperwork and a chipped mug from three addresses ago, you start wondering what you’ve really carried forward and what got left behind.

Every new town or community asks for a slightly different version of you. You shift how you speak, what you share, what you keep to yourself. After a while it’s fair to ask whether there’s a solid core in there, or if you’ve just become very good at fitting in. A few more straight lines and fewer detours might have been easier.

These days I don’t think identity is something you lose in a move, like a box gone missing off the truck. It’s not one fixed thing. It gets built and rebuilt over time. Each relocation adds another layer: new jobs, new landscapes, new people. Some parts you hang onto, some you quietly drop, and some only make sense much later.

What helps is paying attention to the bits that don’t change, no matter where you end up: how you treat people, what you’ll stand up for, the kind of work that still feels worth doing. And then there are the friends who stick, despite distance and long gaps. They say more about who you are than any street name.

So I keep unpacking, literally and otherwise. Sorting what’s still useful, what can be let go, and what new shape things are taking. If I’ve ended up as the sum of a lot of places and phases, that’s okay. There are worse problems than having a life with a few extra chapters.ee to go off and draw your own lines entirely.