Home

I counted this morning. I moved 13 times between the ages of 10 and 25. 13 times in 15 years. I’ve been in the same place now for almost 18 years…but, if I’m being honest, I’ve been feeling that tug for many, many years…it’s just harder to pick up and go when you have a child.

So…WHY? Why have I moved so much? A couple of them were normal moves, but mostly…I’ve always been searching for home.

I want to say that I thought I had it until I was 10. My childhood vision thought I did…I thought that was what home just looked like. My mother’s mental illness aside, my stepfather (who I thought was my daddy) treated me like a princess and my brothers were the pains in the ass they were supposed to be. Now I know that wasn’t a home…it was a mirage and a lie…but I think it warped my view of what home should look like. Not because I had the things I should, but because if that HUGE of a lie could exist…then the TV realities could, too, right?

I could have parents who loved me. I could have siblings that were my best friends. I could be teased and picked on, but still be enough to be loved.

I searched for that home. But…I never fit. I was too much a girl. I was not enough like others. I was too heavy. I wasn’t pretty. I was smart, but that wasn’t exactly something that made people want me around. I was too responsible. I became funny as hell…but that only gets you so far. I was simultaneously too much and not enough.

So…I searched. And searched and searched and searched.

I searched for a place that felt like home, but places aren’t home.

I searched for family that made me feel like home, but sometimes you’ll never fit no matter how much any of you want it to happen.

I searched in relationships…which is about the dumbest move a person can make.

I searched in large groups. If others could find home there, why couldn’t I? But I couldn’t.

Why? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be enough? Why am I always too much?

There was a cycle that I recognized fully this morning.  I search for home…I think I found it…I jump in…I embrace it…I start to feel like I’m the only one embracing it…so I leave. I may look back, but I leave.

I try to leave this feeling behind.

And therein lies the rub. You can’t leave yourself behind. I am the common denominator of the places I don’t fit. Not just in a way of I must really be too much and not enough (I vascillate on whether these things are true about me). In the way that…

I’m always ready to run.

That’s not anything anyone else is doing. That’s not the decision that anyone else is making.

They stay where they are.

I am the one who runs away.

Am I running from them? Or am I running away from myself?

I believe I’m running to find a home…but, in reality, I am an eternal Toby Tyler…running away to join the circus…

Who else moves that many times? Lol

I’m fair enough to myself to know that the homes I’ve run from really were not meant for me. That wasn’t in my imagination.

But…I’m hoping I’ve reached a place inside of myself where I can recognize home when I finally find it…and be willing to stay still and fight for it.