Home Away From Home

Note: I wrote this in June 2011, but blogspot is weird now and puts the new date on things that you take out of draft mode. I just decided I want to choose posts to have up one at a time for now. I get nervous having a bunch of information about myself out there all at once since my posts are pretty personal. Call me crazy.


"You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in really isn’t your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have some place to put your shit, the idea of home is gone. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage, you know. You’ll never have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself for your kids or the family you started. It’s like a cycle or something. I don’t know, but I miss the idea. Maybe that’s all a family really is: a group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

- Andrew Largeman, Garden State

What's wrong with me? Maybe it's the depressing music that Pandora is playing right now. Maybe it's the nostalgia it makes me feel. It's like I'm back in high school being punched in the gut by the pain of unrequited love.

My chest is literally heavy with loneliness and the longing for connection to someone. I hate that I'm afraid to say that because it makes people think that something must be wrong with my marriage. No, I just don't think two people can solve each other's every problem and fill each other's every need. That's why we have brothers, sisters, parents, children, etc. We get different things we need from a variety of people and serve a different purpose in each of their lives as well.

Oh great, now this song just started, "Happiness hit her like a train on a track..." This is how I feel. Eerily hopeful but despairingly sad.

It's so strange to me the way a new person in your life can make you feel. I am suddenly pulled back into my 14-year-old self. Awkward, insecure, overly critical of every word escaping my mouth or my fingertips. I share too much; I ask too much; I am too much. I weigh a person's every word and action just as heavily as I do my own. I read into things that aren't there but that I hope so desperately are because I want this feeling to be mutual. More often than not, it is not.

Is there anything more sad and disappointing than realizing you thought you were on the same page with someone who turns out to be in a completely different book? Human nature is so odd. There are so many unwritten rules about proper interaction. I am also a victim of putting too much emphasis on the importance of following societal norms. I always worry too much that I'm not following them or feel empathetically embarrassed for anyone I see breaking these unknown restrictions on our developing relationships. I get pushed away by someone pushing too hard to get close to me. And then turn around and push someone else away from me.

I have an uncle who happens to be gay. A few years ago, I found a letter he wrote to my mom when he was 14. He told her about a female friend he had who was moving away. He said he realized he loved her and that they just held each other or something and stayed up together all night. For some reason, this really touched me. I realized how beautiful it is to love someone who isn't your family member or significant other. I almost wonder if it's the purest form of love. Here's this person to whom you are neither genetically related nor sexually attracted, and yet you care so much about them. That is such an active choice to love someone. What an honor to have a friend who loves you like that, and what a privilege to find someone you love like that.

I just want to connect. I want to learn something new. I want to fall in love with a new friend. No, I don't want to be single and dating, though that was fun while it lasted. I love my husband very much and feel so lucky to be with him. It's just that I find so much joy in getting to know new people, or getting to see people I already know in a different light. I always try to take away something from each new encounter with a fresh face, but, once in a blue moon, I see a face like that and it looks so familiar. I just want to find out why. I just want to find out why it is I love some people before knowing them well enough for such a strong feeling to make sense.

I would also like to know if I get that feeling because that other person has it, too, or if perhaps it's just all in my own head. Unfortunately, I think the latter may be the case, which honestly makes me feel more delusional and alone than I already did in the first place.

Good Lord, this post is depressing. But it's honest. And weird. Just like me, I guess.