Sometimes I stop running and realize how high I’ve climbed. And it’s strange… because even though from up here I see everything more clearly, inside me there’s a silence that doesn’t feel like peace. It feels more like an echo. Like an emptiness. Like a question beating in my chest louder than the wind hitting me at this height.

There’s one thing I know for sure: no matter how high a person rises, if they have no one to come back down to, they end up floating between the sky and nothingness. They remain there, suspended, like a statue frozen in its own flight. Admiration warms them for a moment, but then leaves them cold, as if they’re leaning on a pedestal too foreign for their soul.

And I wonder: where do I truly return when I get tired?

Maybe that’s why peaks never excited me: they have a kind of loneliness that can’t be seen in photos. Up there it’s not cold because of the altitude, but because of the absence of a place to return to. A body you can rest in, a voice that tells you “you’re here,” without expecting anything in return.

And then I begin to understand: I don’t descend because I’ve lost something; I descend because I remembered. I remembered that before any dream, any fight, any victory, I needed a “home.” Not a house, not an address, but a person, a look, a quiet certainty.

A place where I don’t rise. I simply exist.

It’s strange how out of all the questions in the world, only one has the power to cut through the air around me and leave me completely vulnerable:

“Who is home for me?”

I don’t know if people fear this question because it’s too sincere or because it’s too heavy. But I know it echoes within each of us, as unforgiving as truth.

Sometimes the answer is a person.
Sometimes it’s a face I’m trying to forget.
Sometimes it’s my own heart, the one I left somewhere along the road while I ran toward success.

And yes, sometimes the answer is: “I don’t know yet.”
And that hurts. But it hurts beautifully—like beginnings.

Maybe that’s what it truly means to be alive:
not to live only in ascents, but also in returns.
To have the courage to stop, to ask yourself, to admit that you need someone.
To allow yourself to be soft, not only strong.
To accept that a person doesn’t become a hero because they climb, but because they have somewhere to return.

And then I realize that everything I sought in heights wasn’t light, but reflection.
Not experience, but touch.
Not success, but a place where I can allow myself to simply be.

A home.
A name.
A heart.
A space where what I hear is not an echo, but an answer.