A 200 Square Foot Cabin Called Home

I met my friend on a hot day outside of a train station an hour west of Rome.

He is a First Officer for Royal Caribbean and one of the perks of being friends with sailors is that they will take you cruising with them for essentially free (although you may end up in their cabin if there are no empty guest rooms).

“We got you your own cabin,” he said, cheerfully. “You won’t have to room with me after all.”

“Fantastic,” I replied. “You can carry on with your behind-closed-doors business in peace.”

After taking care of paperwork, I returned to my cabin and took my belongings out of my suitcase. I slowly arranged them around the cabin, enjoying every moment.

It was such a luxurious relief to finally have a private space to call my own, even if just for a short while. It felt wonderful to know that I could leave my stuff and be able to return to it at a later point in time assured that nothing would be disturbed.

A good friend of mine once told me that having a place to truly call home is one of life’s most liberating experiences. I had spent most of my days since I was 17 drifting from one residence to another, therefore couldn’t understand what she meant.

Yet when I reached 24, I finally stumbled upon a situation where I had a space that I truly felt comfortable in—a sanctuary I called home. This was a place I willingly returned to in the evenings and where I could happily spend an entire weekend milling about in.

This sanctuary less than two years, until one rainy February afternoon this year, when my partner told me that he no longer wanted to keep our little home.

And so we moved out at the end of March. I didn’t bother looking for a new place to rent because I felt like my time in my hometown was drawing to a close. I spent the next 3 months sleeping on a permanently dented, twin-sized matress in a dusty room in my parents’ basement. I had been gone for nearly a decade; they no longer had space for me.

Then I headed off to Europe, homeless, unemployed, and alone. All of these things were, in some way or other, of my own doing. I spent the next 2 months bouncing around countries, making friends, marveling at incredible sights, and learning about myself.

I stayed mostly at hostels shared between 4 to 12 people and of varying degrees of noisiness and cleanliness. In that time, I encountered the World’s Loudest Snoring Guy and the World’s Loudest Coughing Girl. Whenever I wasn’t alert, I padlocked my valuables away in lockers.

The moment I first stepped into my own cabin on the Explorer of the Seas, I knew I had found small sanctuary to call home, regardless of how temporarily it belonged to me.

I then left for a cruise-style buffet dinner and marveled at the hundreds of dishes of food that were presented in front of me and how easily accessible it all was.

And I returned to my cabin to this.

As I showered in my private and clean bathroom, wandered out in a state of undress, flopped diagonally onto my queen-sized bed, and rolled among my 4 pillows, it occurred to me: it’s September and this is the most I’ve felt at home all year.

Perhaps this is more somber face of those travelers who have new tales of adventures abroad every time you see them—those vagabonds who love freedom more than anything.

The times when they feel most at home are when they are alone and adrift at sea.