Elisha Esquivel – Come Home

I wrote ‘Come Home' shortly after coming out the other side of a period of depression and anxiety in my life. About that time, I watched a very close friend of mine grappling with a number of mental health difficulties, and I felt I could empathise with some of the things she was going through. I wrote the song Come Home for her initially, but later realised it was also a way of me processing some of the things I had felt and experienced too...

While I was struggling with my own mental health, music played such a huge part in getting me through. I didn’t realise what I was experiencing initially, and often felt like something was fundamentally wrong with me - as if something on the inside had broken and couldn't be fixed, or I’d lost a part of myself that I would never get back. I didn’t understand what was happening, and neither did anybody else around me at the time. Words to songs were sometimes the only thing I felt like I could grab hold of. They articulated the things I was feeling, and seemed to be able to speak just the right words at the right time to keep me afloat.

A particular song that was significant to me during that period was ‘Against the Grain’ by City and Colour. It felt like everything I thought and felt perfectly expressed and crafted into a song - I remember connecting with the lyrics so much that I wrote them out by hand and framed them to hang in my room! 

One of the days after I had recovered from depression and anxiety, I was sitting at my piano reading over the lyrics hanging on my wall and remembering how comforting they had been to me at the time. I thought of my friend who was struggling with all the same things I had been, and the song, ‘Come Home' just started to pour out - one of the rare moments that a song just forms effortlessly from start to finish! I so wanted my friend to know that no matter how far away she felt from everything that was good - or had been good in the past - it was never too late to come home. The term ‘come home’ for me represented coming back to the place of feeling like yourself - knowing inner peace, happiness, and hope again. It also represented coming to others - not being afraid to open up and talk to the people who know and love you. I wanted my friend to know she was not alone in what she was going through. At one point, I had felt like everything was lost, but I’d also experienced things getting better again. I wanted her to know that they could for her too.

Since writing the song, I’ve realised just how many people need to hear this kind of message! Our mental health seems to be such a fragile thing these days, and it’s so easy to find yourself in a dark place without always knowing how or why. I suppose my hope is that anyone in a similar place who hears the song would know they are not alone, and that no matter how hard things get, it’s never too late for things to change - for things to get good again. It’s never too late to decide to talk to someone about what is going on. There are always people out there who care. You are never a lost cause. You are never too far gone. It’s always possible for things to get good again - it’s always possible to come home.