Selfportraits on film (Patreon)

Shoot with Hasselblad 500 c/m and film that I dont remember 💩

I’m finally “back” home.

Which is a funny thing to say, considering I’d never even lived in America before)) But this is our home now.

And honestly, it felt like home almost immediately.

My bed. My pillow. The quiet mornings. Everything felt strangely familiar, as if this place had been waiting for me longer than I realized.

The only thing that clearly hadn’t received the “this is someone’s home now” memo was the kitchen))) Or more specifically… everything inside the kitchen. It looked like nobody had seriously cooked there before. Which, thankfully, is a problem I’ve already started fixing.

Texas welcomed me with very warm hugs. Quite literally))) Everything here feels strangely familiar. Green trees, wildflowers, long summer evenings… Sometimes it feels like someone copied and pasted a Ukrainian June into Texas and then accidentally turned the humidity up to 300%.

As many of you know, I’ve traveled a lot over the years. That’s probably why my English became fairly decent. But ironically, traveling wasn’t always the easiest place to practice it. In Europe, not everyone speaks English… and some people simply pretend they don’t ( I will not point the finger 🥸🇫🇷).

The other challenge was native speakers. I always felt slightly intimidated because I knew I’d miss words, ask people to repeat themselves, or simply not understand something. And for some reason I always felt embarrassed doing that.

The funny thing is that despite speaking English for years, I’d never actually lived in a fully English-speaking environment before. I honestly expected it to feel like watching a British movie without subtitles. Just smiling politely and hoping I’d eventually figure out what everyone was talking about)))

But something completely unexpected happened. For the first time in my life, I actually feel confident. When someone starts talking to me, I don’t panic. If I don’t understand something, I simply ask again. I start conversations myself. I can even make phone calls without mentally preparing for three business days beforehand))) And that might be the biggest surprise of this move.

I expected America to become my home physically. I didn’t expect English to start feeling like home too.

And yes I know that “home” has a lot less to do with geography than I always thought. Just sometimes it quietly appears the moment you stop being afraid to speak and easily understand what people talking about around you) - and from that moment you feel like you already not a stranger in this place)