Caroline Space primarily focuses on people and their relationships with their environment and the places they inhabit. In, This Once Was, Space examines her difficulties identifying where she is from--she constantly moved and changed environments during her young life thus far. Upon her relocation to the Washington, DC area, her personal exploration of this new place was halted as she thrusted herself into a deep relationship with a man who was born in Washington, DC but whose family spent much of their privileged life near places she lived but in locations she could never obtain.