Thoughts of Home

Wow, I need a makeover around here.  It doesn't help that my point and shoot camera is broken (sand got in it in HI) and I just don't want to carry around my Canon SLR right now.  So, new pictures are needed to inspire a new design here on the blog that reflects where I am now.

Where am I right now?  Home. I'm home, at last.  You all probably know how much being home means to me.  If not, it means everything.  I am finally ME, as I prefer to be, as the world needs me, in my element.  You could say I could have learned to be ME in whatever place I found myself, and you would be right.  But, I didn't wanna!  I know how to do that.  Been there, done that.  Done with that.  I want my energies to be used to further my plans and dreams in this place I have chosen.  Or has it chosen me?  I don't know.  All I know is that when I am here, in this town, in this house, with these people, I feel...at peace, energized, comfortable, strong, happy.

It wasn't always this way.  I wasn't happy here, at various times in my life.  I had to go away, to find out who I was and wanted to be.  I had to go away to become the person I needed to be to be able to be here and for here to be HOME.

There are some amazing places in this world and I am so blessed to be able to have visited and lived in them.  When we travel, my family always looks around and says, 'Oh, this place reminds me of (insert some other place we have been)."  I found that the places that reminded me most of this little spot on Earth in Upstate New York were the ones I liked best.  Matamata and Cambridge, New Zealand.  Hood River, Oregon.  The Todd Mall, Alice Springs. The differences made each place seem exotic, but the similarities made them feel comfortable.  Like I could live there.  If only my family and friends could be transplanted there with me....

See how much easier it is just to come home and call it good?

Full Monty

Rather than clutter up facebook with my complaining, I'll do it here, if you don't mind. You don't? Oh, good. If you do, stop reading now and go find something better to do with your time.

I'll just come out and say it. Life sucks right now. I can't see a way up and frankly, I don't want to get up right now. Wallowing feels, if not good, then needed. I see people posting pithy positive crap on fb and I just want to scream. My husband can't stop being a man from Mars and offerring me solutions for all my problems. Do I have to tell you how that feels? I do? OK, it feels like shit. Like not only am I doing everything wrong, I am a bad person for not wanting to help myself. Can't I just have a bad day, week, month, year without the whole world trying to fix me up so they don't have to deal with me and my pain?

I don't know if this is making me feel better or if it will make it worse.

What is the problem you ask? Everything. I miss home. I miss my friends and family. I am not here long enough to make the kinds of friends I need. Don't get me wrong. The people I know here are lovely and I really like them and wish we could be friends. But you gotta understand, it takes me years, years, YEARS to feel close to people. Until then, I am alone in a crowd. I don't know why I am so stunted. I just am and even if I could change it right now and feel close to my new acquaintances, that would just mean that I made friends I will have to leave again. My heart breaks at the thought of having to do that again. I will never do that again.

I am not the kind of person who can have a hundred friends. I can't handle the feeling of being spread so thin. I need deep connection with a few people. The problem here is that there are sooo many new people in my life I can't keep up. I want to dig in and deepen with just a few, but how do I choose? I feel like in order to survive down here I have to be a social butterfly, flitting from party to coffee to social event, when I am more like a hermit with a couple of best friends for life. And even if I do choose, do they choose me too? It is worse than dating, I tell you. It's kind of like if every time you moved, you had to find a new husband.

It might surprize some of you to learn that I assume others don't like me, and wait for proof that they do. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of proof for me to trust. That was hard to say, but it needed saying. I figure I am getting old enough to speak my mind now. My full mind, not just the tidy, positive, inspiring parts. I'm tired of stifling myself for the sake of others and to maintain the image others have of me. I'm not even sure who that Miranda is, but I know she is smarter, stronger, and a whole lot better person than me.

Ok, I gotta get this posted before my computer shuts down on me (some issue with my cooling fan or something, I suspect). Sorry to be such a downer. Meh.

Midlife Boot Camp

As anyone with military training will know, first they break you down and then they build you up again. It is like the Zen idea that you cannot fill your cup if it is already full of old tea. For many years, I have been working at tearing down the structures in my life that have felt inauthentic to who I really am. Which, unfortunately, were most of them, as I was raised in this culture where children don't really get to choose much of anything for themselves. After years of asking 'why?' deeper and deeper, I feel like I have hit bottom. Foundation rock bottom. And now I must build new structures for myself that will support and aid me the rest of my life.

I did not really get to this point consciously. I knew I had been ripping up the old playbook, page by page. And I knew that I occasionally felt a bit lost without the old SOPs to guide me. But I forgot, or failed to see, that one day I would be free of it all, and lost without them. I forgot to build new ones into my life along the way, or at least enough to keep me going as I chose new ideas and plans and dreams for myself.

I told C the other day, in a low, blue moment, that I used to seek Truth and find Answers, but now I just find more Questions. Maybe this is the beginning of Wisdom, but right now it feels like chaos! I have always explored both sides of any issue I was interested in, to assure myself I had made the 'right' choice of what to believe. And I always found answers that let me feel at peace with my choice. Now, I find myself seeing both sides of the coin at once, and reluctant to choose a side, for fear of it being 'wrong'. If you know me, you know how I hate to be wrong!

It is like I moved to the other side of the world or something. ;-)

Seriously, I feel upside down. Turned over and shook out. I'm empty and stuck in a vaguely familiar, yet unsettling and foreign, place where I must fill up again. I now need to decide who I am and what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I kinda wish there was a cosmic MTI to help me build back up again. Like Field Training for your Forties.

I have lived so much for what others need that I am not in touch with what I need. As the kids get older and need me in less pressing and immediate ways, I am left to myself more and more. I am so used to responding to them and staying present for them, I have forgotten how to Be for myself.

I have been in a 'what's the point?' kind of place recently. When you have worked to rid yourself of the shoulds, and get yourself used to the idea that there really are no have tos, but forget to cultivate the want tos, you find yourself a bit aimless. It is not a place I am familiar with, or like very much. Uncomfortable for sure. It does not help that our life here is so temporary and that my life back home is so longed for. If I found myself back in Ithaca, I would hit the ground running. Here, I'm spinning my wheels, but keep getting jammed when I try to move forward. Very little I have dabbled in feels worth the effort. There are a few moments of 'happy, happy, joy, joy' and a whole lotta 'blah'. *Sigh*

Ok, enough whining. I'm sure you will hear more from me on this as I work it out. Any thoughts to offer?

The Best Laid Plans....

Well, our grand adventure should have started today with the drive to VA, but old man winter has decided we need one more day in Ithaca, resting in the hotel. Now, C did get up really early to drive down ahead of us and the bulk of the storm, since he felt he needed to go into work tomorrow to check on last minute moving stuff. The girls and I will follow tomorrow, after the snow clears out.

We got the house cleaned out and the keys to our property manager yesterday, so all is good on the home front. I was the last one at the house, mopping the floor and shutting it up, and while I expected to feel sad, I was more numb than anything. Maybe it will hit me later, or maybe the fact that we are coming back has kept me from being upset. Or maybe we have just not slowed down enough to feel yet.

I've learned a lot about myself in the past few years. One thing is that I resist change. Now, I can swing with a new plan after a period of readjustment, but boy do I hate changes at first. The other is that the unknown scares the bejeezus out of me. Literally freezes me up and keeps me from moving forward without help. C is really good at being that help, for which I am immensely grateful. So you could say this move has been challenging for me. ;-) All that said, I guess I am doing ok, so far. I'll keep you posted on the rest!