Once Upon A Homeless Time

Home. This is a concept that I have struggled with for years now. Wait no, let me take that back, for my entire life. Growing up my family moved around from town to town, state to state quite often, going with the ebb and flow of where my father felt his heart leading his family’s journey to go. I loved it, it allowed me to see so much and experiences things I wouldn’t have had the chance to other wise. Yet somewhere in-between all the moves I began to grow up and a spirt of searching settled into my heart. Never staying in the same place for more than a handful of years somehow drove it into my head that I didn’t belong anywhere and I couldn’t be happy until I found that exact place. Home. Being the good girl that I am I used my multiple relocations over the years to blame for the loneliness that gripped at my heart each night as I pulled the covers over my head to swallow myself in darkness. Standing in a crowded room was even worse. I would look around at all those faces that were supposed to bring me so much security and companionship brought me nothing but an ache in my heart, a longing for more. I needed to find my people. Those who simply ‘got me‘. For a misunderstood girl, my greatest wish was for someone to see me. The last leg of my family led journey took me to a small town in California. Just when my life was on the edge of completely and utterly falling apart in Oregon (the state we previously lived in) California reached out her hand of health and I grasped on. And while I can look back on my so far short life and see that those 5 years I resided within those city walls were the years that I ‘grew up’. I had just walked through hell and California offered me a land of serenity. Yet I still was searching for more. My heart still wouldn’t unpack my bags and call it home.

5 years into living there I heard the wind whispering so softly to be on my way again. By this time my parents had moved to Denver and I knew I was supposed to join them. But to my heart it was more than just a move, it was yet another chance to seek this place I had convinced myself existed. A place where once I stepped into the town, all my worries would fall away and something deep inside would sigh from relief knowing it was exactly where I was supposed to be. But it wasn’t. I was a little girl frantically searching for security. A security that didn’t exist. But what I discovered was myself.

All my life I was the quite one. The perfect ear to listen to all you had to say, never giving you back my own thoughts. My mouth was so sewn shut that I couldn’t open it to say something even if I wanted to. You needed someone to walk all over? Baby I’d be your freaking doormat. I’d but up with anyone’s bullshit, with a polite ‘please and thank you’ each time. The funny thing about uprooting your life to a new state where you know all of 4 people and not being the most out going person to walk this earth, I found myself with a lot of time to do nothing but to reflect upon my own life. For the first time I looked in the mirror and saw someone I recognized from all the visions I had once had of who I wanted to be. Over time I ripped out the stitches that held my lips so tightly in place and I found my own two feet standing on solid ground. I became confident, sure of what I wanted, who I was. And damn it, I’d hate to be the person who tried to tell me other wise. Away from my past I formed my opinions, unaffected by the ones that had so influenced my silence before. I stood with my eyes wide open and a heart that would never back down from what she believed. Everyone I encountered knew the new me, so of course it was easy it operate out of the rebirthed women inside me. When I try and explain to the people at work how I used to be quite and passive, they so often scoff at the thought. For I had done a complete 180. It was easy, there was nothing left to shut me back into the box I had so uncomfortably lived most of my life in.

Nothing until now. For the first time in over a year of being gone, I sit thousands of miles up in the air in a metal plane, taking me mile by mile back to my old stomping grounds. I cannot help but let my mind race wondering how my trip will play out. I know I will be walking into a lot of the same situations I left a year ago, some of the same people in the same ruts. From hundreds of miles away I can already feel their expectations pushing upon me, they’re the same, why shouldn’t I be? I resist the urge to grit my teeth in preparation for the battle that might lie ahead of me. But every couple of minutes I have to remind myself to put my weapons down, this battle is not my responsibility to fight. In fact, there is no battle at all. I have fought for the rights of my own thoughts and opinions and not ever my past can take them from me. Sure, I’m guessing some people might be surprised, for the same girl who left them a year ago is not the one returning to them today. But I am her, and she is I.  Perhaps the battle is found no further than my own head.

I have found my home, and it is located no further than the confines of my own heart. My confidence is not something I’ve found, it’s what I’ve fought for. And won. And no one can take that from me, not even the ghosts of my past. So you better fucking buckle up California, baby girl’s back. And a little bit more improved feisty than the last round.