By Jane Sonnenschein · March 21, 2026

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been going through some of my old writing. In a way, it feels as though I’m also sorting through parts of myself.

There are so many things I thought I’d forgotten long ago, things that never cross my mind in everyday life. But then a familiar scene, a sentence, or a certain feeling brings them back from somewhere deep inside. It’s as though someone has gently pulled on a thread, and an entire memory comes alive again.

That’s exactly what happened today.

This afternoon, I went out by tram. The wind was so strong that it left me feeling a little dazed. Yesterday had felt like spring, with flowers blooming everywhere, but today was suddenly gloomy and cold, with gusts of wind blowing straight at you. That’s German weather for you. It can change just like that.

Before leaving home, I’d been rushing to get Alicia to study Chinese, and I almost missed the tram. When I finally sat down, my whole body seemed to relax at once, and a wave of sleepiness washed over me.

I fell asleep on the tram.

I’d only travelled a few stops, but I was already so tired that I didn’t want to open my eyes. For a moment, a very familiar thought crossed my mind: What if I just stayed on and rode a few more stops?

I’ve always liked the gentle rocking of a bus or tram.

Years ago, when I was feeling low and didn’t know whom to talk to or how to deal with my feelings, I would sometimes get on a bus or tram by myself, ride all the way to the last stop, and then take it back again.

Sometimes there wasn’t even a particular reason. I just wanted to spend a little while moving through the city. As long as I hadn’t got off, it felt as though I could put off returning to reality for a little longer.

Looking back, I think I’ve always been like this. Whenever I have nowhere to put my feelings, being on the road gives me a little room to breathe.

Later, while I was still on the tram, I came across an article that Xiaobai, a fellow writer I’d met on Xiaohongshu (a Chinese social platform combining lifestyle sharing, personal posts, and community discussions, somewhat similar to Instagram), had posted that day.

He wrote about cycling home by a different route, introducing a small act of rebellion into an otherwise predictable routine.

After reading it, I left him a comment. I told him that I’d been under quite a lot of pressure lately, and that his article, with its little details of everyday life, had made me feel a bit more relaxed.

He replied:

“Then you should do what I did. Take a road you wouldn’t normally take.”

That one sentence suddenly took me back ten years.

I remembered that I’d written something very similar many years ago.

Back then, I had missed my usual tram after work. On impulse, I decided to take a different route and try the newly completed S-Bahn, the local suburban rail service.

That railway line had been under construction for so many years that I’d almost begun to think it would never be finished in my lifetime.

But that day, quite by accident, I finally took it.

When I got off the train, I found myself in an unfamiliar, rather deserted-looking area. Ahead of me was a new glass pedestrian bridge. Beyond that was a narrow path lined with trees on both sides. Everything was quiet, and the surroundings felt strangely unfamiliar.

I was a little confused, and hungry too. I thought I’d probably gone the wrong way and would have to change trains again.

Eventually, I asked an elderly woman for directions. She pointed me in the right direction, and I continued walking, though I wasn’t entirely convinced.

Along the way, I passed small detached houses and quiet streets. I still had that uneasy feeling that I might be getting farther and farther away from where I wanted to go.

But just as I was approaching the end of the road, I looked up.

And there, across the street, was my apartment building.

I can still remember how that moment felt.

So I didn’t need to change trains after all.

The road had led me straight home.

Remembering that little incident today stirred something in me that I can’t quite put into words.

Maybe that’s simply how we are.

We think certain things are long behind us. We believe we’ve made sense of them, let them go, or gradually healed.

But understanding something, or healing from it, is never a straight line moving steadily forward. It’s more like being pulled back and forth, again and again.

Some days, you feel as though you’re doing fine.

Then a gloomy sky, a strong wind, or a gently rocking tram can suddenly bring back everything you thought you’d moved past.

You still get tired. You still want to escape sometimes. And when life becomes too overwhelming, you still find yourself thinking, “Just let me ride a few more stops. I don’t want to get off yet.”

But perhaps that’s exactly why the smallest things in everyday life can suddenly become so precious.

A simple article full of ordinary life, a sentence telling you to take an unfamiliar road, or something you casually wrote ten years ago can gently pull you back when life has begun to feel almost too heavy to bear.

It doesn’t mean you’re suddenly healed.

It doesn’t mean you’ve finally figured everything out.

It just means that, for a brief moment, you’ve found a little piece of yourself again.

As I’ve been sorting through my old writing these past few days, I’ve increasingly come to feel that much of what we write isn’t simply about recording our lives.

Often, without even realising it, we’re recording ourselves.

We’re recording how we got lost, how we tried to find our way, and how, during difficult moments, a journey, a turning, or an unexpected way out helped us lift ourselves, even just a little, out of that heavy, trapped feeling.

When I wrote that piece ten years ago, I probably never imagined that so many years later, a casual remark from someone else would bring the whole memory back.

Nor could I have imagined that, after all these years of going round in circles, making progress and sometimes finding myself back where I started, I would still be moved by those little moments when life takes an unexpected turn.

Because sometimes what allows us to breathe again isn’t finally understanding our whole life.

Sometimes it’s simply changing direction for a while, turning a corner, or stepping just a little outside our usual routine.

Even if that means riding a few extra stops. Even if it means putting off the return to reality for a little longer.

Or simply finding, in something written ten years ago, the person I used to be: someone who was still searching, who sometimes lost her way, but who could also, quite unexpectedly, find herself standing almost at her own front door.

Thinking about it this way, perhaps there are many things we don’t need to be so quick to reach a conclusion about.

After all, how easily can anyone really make sense of everything?

How easily can we truly let things go?

Maybe healing is simply this: even while we’re being pulled back and forth by old feelings, we can still occasionally recognise ourselves in an old road, something we once wrote, or an emotion we thought we’d left behind.

And sometimes, a road that seems to be taking us farther away turns out, in the end, to have been leading us somewhere all along.

At the end of the road, there was home.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 路的尽头，原来就是家

German version: Am Ende des Weges war plötzlich mein Zuhause