I am not the type of person who ever really feels like she belongs somewhere. I always feel that I am transient and as result so are the places I call “home.” Home is usually my current location, where I live, reside, my new found escape. I do not belong to one place that offers me a sense of tranquility, a place to call home.
For these past 3 months Cape Town has been my home (I use this word loosely), as Uconn Storrs was before that, and my room in Naugatuck before that. Now I find myself unwilling to leave. Usually every place that I escape to eventually is discovered by the thoughts that I run from, and as such it is time to move again. During my time in college it has been a back and forth between house where I live and Uconn. Now that Cape Town has come into the picture I am not ready to leave, not ready to call my house my home again.
Prior to leaving the U.S I was distressed to go, to run away to escape, though I never know what I am running from. It might just be myself/ or actually the lack of myself that exists when I have been somewhere for too long. Here in South Africa I am happy. Of course on a day to day I feel other emotions but generally I am happy. Life is slower, less stress and less distress. I find that I like myself here better and have found a person that was too busy running to be rediscovered. I feel free. I don’t want to lose this Freedom, it is all I have ever wanted.
I am not counting down days but rather running back and forth between the possibility of staying or going “home”. I feel guilt and a sense of distance from my family and I want to see them, I do not yearn for home though. I am at a complete standstill. And leave it to my family to be of no help. “ you can do whatever you want sweety, you just need to figure it out soon”.
I realized coming on this trip that this was a parallel and the beginning to the rest of my life. To follow my dreams I must be distance and often displaced from home. Disconnected from my family. I have missed my baby brother while he was teething, his first words, his crawling and now his first two teeth. I might miss my sister’s college graduation (the first of our line). I am missing their life as they are missing mine. When I go home, what will I go back to? Have I changed (of course), have they changed? Why has my best friend (my little sister) been too preoccupied to communicate with me while I am away?
I have realized that to be free and achieve my dreams I have to give up something. It is true that you can’t have it all. What do I have to give up? My family….
I will never be the home body that my sister is, and I never look forward to being in one place, feeling stranded stuck. Anxiety.
Yet all I have ever wanted was a single place to call HOME. A place to look forward too, Safe, warm, all mine. To provide comfort.
Maybe Home just isn’t for me….
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