i have a great awareness tonight of how it feels to be left; to be steady amidst a sea of change. i've quite perfected this art, this skill, of staying in one place while others come and go.

the intensity of feelings, the sense of immediacy to express them...unexpected glances of the quotidien from afar, as though i'm seeing what they will soon see..the sudden awareness of a past that will never be repeated nor matched. an ache. a sorrow. an appreciation. hope. courage in walking forward into the unknown...

knowing that when and if there is reconnection, there will be a divide. of time not spent together, of experiences lived apart. knowing that starving the need for distance and distinction can kill, but that feeding that need can feel like dying.

rooted. is it right to be? am i missing discoveries about myself, about others...that can only be made out there in the wide world? where there is no place one must be; no trivialities to adhere to; where the way home isn't quite so clear?

i long to pack my bags. to set out with no plans, just the pull of heart strings tensioning my likelihood to return here. i do. i grew up doing so; traveling every few months with my family from our hub in chicago to destinations across the country or the continent or in europe, the caribbean, central america, the south pacific...but time and again, these days, i make the drive to the airport and the bags in the backseat are not my own. i empty my car of passenger and luggage and drive back to the known and familiar. 

but my drive home comes with a variance that is always so tangible; a lightening of my own load, as if i had left some of my own baggage at the airport: absence. awareness of being on my own, without those who once made this space feel like home. it was an illusion. or at the very least an ephemeral state. 

to feel foreign in a strange land is expected. to feel foreign in surroundings that are so familiar...not so much. i search for home, season after season. not by seeking it in new surroundings, but within the same few square miles; the radius of my search gets smaller each time...

my radius, now: half of five feet, four inches tall; half of a size 27 waist. my radius, my search for home...within me. i must find home within...feeling so very close...