Most of us spend a fair amount of time feeling like guests somewhere we have every right to be. The job you have held for four years and still describe as new. The city you moved to a decade ago. The room you walk into wondering whether anyone is going to ask why you are there.

Nobody asks. They never were going to. The feeling of not quite belonging is almost entirely manufactured on the inside, and the people around you have been assuming you were meant to be there the entire time, because you were.

Belonging is not something granted to you at a ceremony. It accumulates. You show up enough times, do the work, learn where things are kept, and one day you realize you have stopped rehearsing your reason for being in the room.

So say it plainly when it comes up. I live here. I work here. This is mine. Not as a defense and not as a claim you are prepared to argue, just a fact, stated the way anyone says where they are from.

Look at the little frog on this one. Perfectly at home, no explanation offered, not going anywhere.