Home

I've been thinking a lot lately about what "home" means. Is it the place you leave and come back to when you go out into the world? Is it the family you were born into and lived with until it was time for you to fly the coop and become an adult? Is it the people you met along the way and became deep friends with? Is it your cat and/or dog you feed and play with every day? If you have children, is it those little faces that smile, cry, yell, pout, laugh? Is it the man or woman you hang out with at night, on weekends, early in the morning? Is it the trees that watch over you when you mow the backyard? Is it yourself? 

If you don't feel at ease in your own body and mind, if you feel like an outsider, a stranger in the world, a wanderer in life, can four walls and a roof be a home? I watch my cat and my dog. Except for loud noises (like my neighbor pounding on our shared wall or fireworks blasting the evening), they seem so at ease with who they are and where they are and how we live together in a small space. How do they do that?

I'm never at ease, and it's been like that since my first glimpse of self consciousness as a toddler. I lived in a nice house (or apartment when I was very young) but I never felt safe and loved. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why I can't find "home." My parents both came from hard-working, undemonstrative, rather distant families. Maybe they felt just as lost as I do.

I remember watching the movie "Hope Floats" and the grown daughter was upset and crying. She laid her head on her mother's lap, and her mother stroked her daughter's hair. I remember being stunned - I didn't know you could do something like with a mother. I didn't know you could go to a mother for physical comfort, or any kind of comfort for that matter. Maybe, just maybe, this is why I've always been a loner. 

Being a loner isn't bad. I get to think a lot (probably too much) and do my own thing. I come and go as I please (within reason - a certain dog and cat want to be fed at certain times every day) and I decorate my place as I want, eat what I want, go to sleep when I want, watch what I want on TV, clean when I want. It's not bad at all. I'm just looking to feel at home, some place where I feel peaceful and creative. 

I just started reading "You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life" by Jen Sincero. I'm only on the introduction but already Ms. Sincero has my attention. She says you can't just WANT to change your life, you have to DECIDE to change your life. Now, that's a revelation for little me. I've spent my life wanting to change my life and doing some stupid things in the name of change because I really didn't have a plan. George Eliot supposedly said 150 years ago that it's never to late to be what you might have been. Well, I guess I still have time . . . .