What and where is home? Much has been written about it: Home is where you hang your hat, home is that place where they have to take you in, home is where the heart is.
For me, I guess it was the last one. The problem being that my heart was with my mother. She was also my center and my anchor (this goes back to my lack of self-differentiation from her). So when she died, there went home, center, and anchor.
I could pretend that I had a home when I went to visit the house and check it out. I called it "my house." But although I still felt very comfortable there, it was empty besides me.
What about Houston? you might ask. Well, I like it well enough (although the early high temperatures this year are not making me any happier than the flooding this winter). But I don't have friends to do things with much. I have some commitment issues, so my heart isn't really here.
Some of my heart is in Seattle, where the majority (all four) of my friends are. They love me. I know the city and I know that it makes me crazy if I have to drive in traffic. But the winters have gotten colder, with more snow and ice, and the gray months are long, and so far this year they are not having a summer (it's 62 degrees).
Some of my heart is on the Oregon Coast. I have one very close friend and several caring friends there, some left over from my mom. It's beautiful there and small town so not too much crazy traffic. But its winters are also getting worse and its summers are rarely something wonderful (65 being the usual high temperature). Plus, there's no work to be had and the housing market, while dropping in price, is still more than I have.
I think, sometimes, that I'll move back to the PNW just to be near my friends. I'm not sure that would be the best reason. Because first, I have to develop my own center and my own feeling of home, or I'm just going to try to wrap my un-self-differentiated umbilical cord around someone up there and expect them to enmesh their lives with mine. Not good.
I need to stay where I am until I finish therapy, until I have become my own person and am happier and much less anxious and have a firm grasp of the tools that keep me that way. And only then will I know where I want to live, where I want my physical home to be. Because my emotional home needs to be inside of me so I have it always.
Are your physical and emotional homes in the same place? If not, how do you reconcile the difference? Where is your emotional home?
"Are your physical and emotional homes in the same place? . . . Where is your emotional home?" Wow. Those are great questions. Thinking . . . thinking . . . .
ReplyDeleteI guess my emotional home is like the stone dropped in water that creates circles. That stone is me and the ripple closest to me is my husband and kids followed very closely by my parents, then moving out to include more family and friends and so on. The house in which I live is home, physically, in that it is where I live with my family, but if we moved, then "home" would be in a different physical location. In spite of living in this house for 20 years, I haven't grown a strong emotional attachment to it, perhaps because we moved so much when I was growing up that I've never been able to think of any house as a permanent home. My most immediate answer to where is your home is myself. I am at home with myself. And then it occurred to me how profoundly lucky I am to have that. May you discover your own home within yourself, Skye, to live in peace, to invite in friends and lovers (if you want!) but to keep as your own.
We lived in one home in the town I grew up in for 12 years, from when I was 4 until I was 16. That house was so much home for me that for most of my life I've dreamt of that house when I've dreamt of homes (symbolically, dreaming of a house is dreaming of the self). I don't know if I still do anymore because I'm out of the habit of remembering my dreams.
DeleteI do want to make my home within myself. And would definitely like to have a lover to invite in .... :)
Skye, my mother and I were also very close. I was sharing the family home with her when she grew sick and was her primary caregiver through her illness and death. Our stories in that aren't very different. Losing her tore up my heart. The first couple of years totally sucked.
ReplyDeleteThen I first came down to volunteer at the dolphin center I'd loved for so long here in the Florida Keys where our family had a vacation home. I'd bounced around sort of rootless for almost two years, including doing a bunch of freelance work and part-time jobs while working on my novel writing craft. The volunteer experience for six weeks helped me ground myself. I came back a couple of months later for a week, then again later in the year. The following year I spent the entire winter down here working for the center part-time and also volunteering.
I knew before the end of the season that I'd found the place where I was supposed to live. Even though it meant leaving my brother, sister-in-law and nephews and many friends, I knew. My heart and my home are here. I'm not just content. I'm happy.
It sounds simplistic to say that you need to go where you believe you'll be happy. Sometimes it's a crap shoot. From everything you've written here thus far, it sounds like you're where you need to be doing the work you need to on yourself. From there, I think you can look out at the world with a sense of new purpose and adventure. Go where you've been happy before and try it on for size. Your new life and home could very well then coalesce around you.
I find it interesting that I, too, am working freelance and part time, when I'm working (given the different economic periods we did this this in). I don't want a full-time job, either due to commitment issues or just because I want the freedom of freelance (but not the poverty that comes when money is tight; but money is tight for hiring full-time employees, too). I'm rambling.
DeleteYou have good ideas. I'm so glad you are happy. I loved living on the Oregon Coast for the first few years. But then there was no one to talk to except at work or my mom and grandma and I got bored and lonely. I now have one very good friend there who misses me a lot because he doesn't have anyone there that is as good a friend as me. But I'm not sure if it's quite the right place. Well, there is still plenty of time.
No need to start making any decisions like that right now. I just have a tendency to want to. I tend to feel that if I move, I will change. Don't know why. And right now I have a lot more baggage, too much to be dragging around.
I thought about where I wanted to live, and I'm here, and I love it. But it's a crapshoot. Didn't love my career until the last few months when I knew I would retire early. I thought about my career and still ended up in one not so good for me. So it's a crapshoot.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, where I live the weather's fine year round, there're tech writing jobs in the greater area because we're a science hub. Friends, as always, you're on your own. Exercise classes and volunteer work in my area of interest and joining clubs worked for me, all the traditional routes.
Sounds like you have a plan, sounds workable. I predict a year from now you'll be writing from a different space, emotionally if not physically.
And you live where? *writes notes for later*
DeleteFine weather, tech writing jobs, and science hub, all sound terrific to me.
A year from now ... such a long time. At the very least I hope I have an income or I'll be living in a friend's guest room and trying to find work in Seattle. :)
May your prediction be true and I'm in a different (better) space emotionally. Then I can figure out the physically and everything else.
Skye, come to San Diego!
DeleteIsn't it expensive to live in San Diego? It's such a perfect area. And then there's the beach. But California is extremely expensive. There's that big Scripps marine science center near there, right?
DeleteIf I could afford it, that would definitely be an option.
I guess I have a similar situation to you in the sense that I have no place that I feel is home. I've lived in a lot of places and while I love something about most of them, I wouldn't necessarily choose any of them as places to live today.
ReplyDeleteThere's a 12 step saying - there is no geographical cure. I think that's right but there are some other things to consider. There are places where the weather makes life easier. There are places where I vibe with the general populace better. I stay where I am now for the time being because my gkids are here. This is deep in the bible belt and republican by a very large majority; not an easy place for a liberal atheist to live.
I hear you about that last bit! I've been lucky to at least meet other liberals, if not many other people who have different religious beliefs than the majority.
DeleteI've lived all over Canada, so I'm not particularly attached to one city (though Ms Brownlow has had a similar experience as JJJ, of living somewhere that's just totally wrong for you--and she warned me against moving anywhere too philosophically different.)
ReplyDeleteI've also lived apart from my mum most of my life, so while I'm very close to my parents and brother, I don't *need* them for that Home feeling. (Though leaving them always gives me some homesickness.)
Being away from Fernando and the cats--now that's a challenge! Quite painful at times.
Ultimately I'm at home in Moi. So I agree you're on the right track--to keep on at the therapy as your sense of self continues to crystallize. And then if you move it'll be for the right reason. :-)
"as your sense of self continues to crystallize": that is the best way I've heard it described. That's exactly what is needing to happen: have a strong, true, sense of self. And maybe as strong and true as a quartz crystal!
ReplyDeleteI am sorry that you have to be away from Fernando and the cats right now; I'm sure they all miss you as much as you miss them and the furry ones don't understand. Many FGBVs for you to get through as well as possible and for things to come together, and soon.
Thanks :-) FGBVs appreciated
DeleteI'm not comfortable with who I am. I don't think you are, either. Why aren't you?
ReplyDeleteI read a suggestion for social anxiety recently: look at yourself in a mirror, and spend 10 minutes talking to yourself. The writer connected social anxiety with self issues, and saw the cure as getting used to seeing oneself and spending time with one's self. I'm not completely persuaded, especially by his cure, but it's an idea that bears more thought.
Are you spending too much time or not enough in your own skull? Are you making that time quality time, or treating it like being in an elevator; on your way elsewhere and pretending the other people in your skull aren't really there?
You ask where you should live. That's not the question. What do you want to do, and where should you live so you can do that? If it's be with friends, then it's the PNW. If it's walk on the beach, then which one? I was going to ask "how do you want to fill your time", but that sounds like "how do you want to distract yourself". What do you want to do, that would make you happy at the end of the day?
You ask a lot of interesting questions, most of which I don't have answers to. It's true, I get through my days by distracting myself mostly, rather than by experiencing them. What would make me happy at the end of the day is to spend at least some of my time writing books and stories. I've enjoyed the hell out of writing this novel. I imagine I'm going to get great satisfaction out of revising it.
DeleteI get great satisfaction out of editing and revising documents to make them clearer. I get great satisfaction out of communicating interesting things to other people, preferably through writing. If I could find a way to do all of that from anywhere I wanted to be, it would certainly open up a lot more options for where I lived. Then I'd have to answer your other question about what I want to do that would affect where I live.
I have a lot of thinking and a lot of doing to do.
We build labyrinths in our minds then make ourselves struggle to find the way out.
ReplyDeleteYou don't describe anything location specific, other than needing a net connection. That opens up many possibilities. What do you want to do that is location specific?
Walk on the beach, preferably the ocean but I can be flexible about that.
DeleteSee my friends and spend time with them, either regularly or as visits back and forth.
Wear sweaters and jeans in the winter and tank tops and shorts in the summer.
Avoid driving on ice (and, if possible, snow). Yes, I know this is a negative goal.
Avoid having to drive on freeways and excessively crowded highways/streets to get to the grocery store. Basically, live in a suburb/quieter or smaller area near the basics like grocery stores.
Make more friends. Spend time with my friends (new or old) frequently.
How's that for some location-specific wants?