[In Progress] One day, I came home from school a little later than usual. It was a typical Dutch afternoon, with soft sunlight breaking through the clouds. As I stepped inside, I found my mother and uncles waiting with sudden news: we had to pack everything. I can’t even remember what I chose to bring.

No more playing with the friends I grew up with in the neighbourhood. No more attending the school I was so familiar with. No more daydreaming in the bedroom I had to leave behind, seemingly overnight.

My grandparents, uncles, and other family members did their best to provide a home for my sisters and I. It was a time filled with complex emotions. Grief, fear, and a pain so deep it was hard to put into words.

Some of my most vivid memories are of how I coped. I pretended it was just one big sleepover. I read my favourite comic books on repeat, like a well-loved song. I sketched with my grandfather. Ghosts, goblins, and a dark knight rising from the shadows. Occasionally, I hid in the attic, where I stumbled upon strange masks and an incomplete toy train track that seemed to lead nowhere. When I came back down, I felt ready to face it all, though anger at the world simmered inside me.

It wasn’t until I became a young man that I fully understood what we had left behind: a life of memories and experiences captured in photographs and unfilled albums, now fading into obscurity. We left behind not just a home but pieces of ourselves. Moments frozen in time. Holidays, milestones, past and future lives were lost. Never to find their rightful place again.