Between Home and Nowhere

Hotels have always fascinated me. They’re built to feel like home, but everyone knows they aren’t. You walk in with your suitcase, greeted by soft lighting and fresh sheets, but there’s always that quiet hum underneath it all: you don’t live here.

What makes them so compelling is that strange mixture of comfort and impermanence. For a night or two, you can belong anywhere. But you’re also anonymous, just another name on the register, a guest who will leave no trace except a dent in the pillow.

There’s a certain intimacy in hotels too—sleeping, eating, dreaming in a room that isn’t yours. Yet there’s also the unease, the thought of all the other lives that have passed through. It’s a place that holds countless beginnings and endings, all layered over each other like wallpaper.

I’ve always been drawn to that tension. Hotels are both sanctuary and stage set, both shelter and reminder that you’re only passing through. Maybe that’s why they stick in the mind long after you’ve checked out—a little piece of nowhere that feels, for a moment, like it could be home.