Gratitude: Sing it, praise it, shout it

It feels both utterly cliché and utterly appropriate to write about gratitude now, two days before Thanksgiving.  I’m not usually one to jump on the bandwagon with such things: why be grateful and tout your gratitude only one day, one week, one month out of the year when we have 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months in which we can celebrate and live in gratitude?  Why express gratitude then if, during that one day, that one week, that one month, you just aren’t feeling grateful?  Why fake the gratitude just because some holiday or cultural ritual (which may or may not have meaning for you) tells you it’s time to give thanks?  I say, “pfffft.”  If you feel grateful now, sing it, dance it, shout it in whatever way you can.  If you decide in the middle of January that the warmth of your hot chocolate on a cold, snowy night is your time of thanksgiving, sing it, praise it, revel in your gratitude then.  If it suddenly sneaks up on you and takes you by surprise as you watch the sunrise one morning in March, let that morning, then, be your time of thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving rants aside, I am thinking about gratitude.  (I have many, many thoughts right now I am trying to rein in and focus, so I apologize if this becomes disjointed).  Lately, I have noticed a change in myself.  It’s been sneaking up on me for a bit now, and I’ve noticed glimpses of it off and on, but more and more consistently I notice that I am feeling…(I can’t find the word I want here, and realize I’m balking a bit—taking the easy way out—backpedaling, finger over the backspace key).  Here’s a story:

The night I was sexually assaulted (have I ever written that out, directly, on here before?  I think not.  And there it is, in black and white—backpedaling, finger over the backspace key, I continue), the woman who was with me—a friend, I thought, was just one of the people who hurt me beyond what I thought was possible.  It’s funny what stays with you when you hurt like that.  I recall one conversation we had a few weeks before the assault and subsequent ending of our friendship.  I don’t know what we were discussing, but I used the word “strength.”  There were several people standing around, witnessing this conversation.

                “What did you say?” she asked, laughing.

                “What did I say about what?” I asked, confused.

                “The word you just used.  Say it again.  S-t-r-e…”

                “Strength?” I asked, totally lost.

She shuddered, dramatically.  “You know you say it wrong, right?  I hate when people mispronounce things, and so many people say that word wrong.”  She shuddered again.  “Argh, I always want to tell people ‘just say it right, and if you can’t pronounce it, don’t use it.’  Say it likes it’s spelled.”

                “How do you say it?”

                “Strength,” she said.  I couldn’t hear the difference.

                “What did I say?”

                “Strength.  You say it like Amelia* says it.  I want to smack her every time she says it.”  Amelia was someone in our program at school that this friend hated.  Hated, with a capital H, and probably a capital A-T-E-D, too.  To be equated to her was definitely not a good thing.  I was embarrassed—the people around me didn’t say anything.  For those few weeks, I caught myself when I was about to say that word, unsure of whether I was going to say it “correctly” or “incorrectly.”  I’m still not sure if I say it correctly or incorrectly, or even if the way I say it or said it is or was correct. 

After the assault, though, every time I heard this word, I was reminded of this conversation—and subsequently of the hurt, of the assault, of the loss of the friendships, the loss of trust—a single word became enough to literally take my breath away as though I was under the enormous weight of the word.  Strong.  Strength.  You don’t realize how much people use the word “strength” until it takes you to a heart-racing, mind-flashing place every time you hear it.  The funny thing is, people talk more about strength after an event like a sexual assault than they do at any other time.  Well, in actuality there’s really nothing funny about it: having your sense of power and autonomy stripped away, feeling like you are scraping down as far as you can reach to dig up one iota of whatever will get you up and through the day, and being unable to even use the word “strong” without feeling as though you crumble into a million pieces is a situation no word fits.  “Funny” will have to do.

I struggle with the concept of being strong, and my issue with the idea of being strong goes back much further than the story above.  (Tell the story here.  Just tell it.  Take your finger OFF of the backspace key).

I was 11 years old.  My 9 year old sister was having her 4^th heart surgery, and I had spent hours in the waiting room and walking around the hospital entertaining my 4 year old sister.  In the waiting room, I listened to a mother on the phone telling family members that her son did not make it through surgery.  I try to shield my sister from the raw grief before us and we go for a walk.  In the playroom, we meet a little boy who has tubes coming from seemingly everywhere and is attached to a big, beeping machine taller than he is.  “Hi,” he says to us.  “My name is Henry, and I’m waiting for a heart.”

Hours later, I am allowed into the PICU to see my sister, an hour out of surgery.  She looks tiny on the little, low bed, and looks nothing like the loud, obnoxious sister I know.  “Talk to her,” my mother says.  I can’t.  My throat closes, my eyes fill with tears, and I can't breathe, much less fake a smile. “Leave,” says my mother, pointing to the door.  A well-intentioned nurse pulls me aside.  “Your sister is going to be fine.  You have to be strong for her, you’re her big sister!  Be a big girl and go tell her she’s going to be okay.  She needs you to be her strong big sister.” 

“What’s this?” my grandfather asks, rounding the corner.  “None of that. Pull it together now, pull it together.  Aren’t you going to be nice and strong for your sister and your mother?  Pull it together.”  I swallowed my tears and walked back into the PICU.

And one more story:

When I was 20, I had two sisters with serious health problems.  I was a senior in college, a few short months away from graduating, trying to finish classes, I took some time off to be at the hospital when my sister had surgery.  In the midst of it all, I reached a breaking point.  I was sitting in the waiting room, studying while my grandfather sat across from me doing a crossword puzzle.  Without saying anything to him, and just really wanting to be left alone, I quietly started to cry.  My grandfather looked up from his crossword puzzle.  “I am so tired of you crying all the time.  Why can’t you just be strong like me?  You have people depending on you.  What would your mother say if she knew you were crying right now?  Pull yourself together.”  I stood up, turned my back on him, and moved to walk out of the waiting room.  He called my name and I turned, hoping for an apology.  Instead, he flipped me the bird.

There are three stories.  Just three. 

Amalia Ortiz, in her poem “Some Days” writes, “When people tell me I am a strong woman/I want to tell them I don’t always feel very strong.  Some days I get so tired of being strong I want to let my legs collapse under the weight of the world on these shoulders and just cry myself to sleep./ Some days some days I get so tired of being strong frustration sends me pacing the floor, no solutions, no where to go, nothing to do but pace myself crazy… Some days,” she ends, “we must let ourselves fall apart, before we can move forward.”

For a while, it was important to me to try to reclaim that word and the last line of that poem went through my head constantly.  "Some days, we must let ourselves fall apart, before we can move forward."  It was important for me to try to see myself as “strong.”  To believe that I am a strong woman.  I tried to redefine it.  I tried to change my view of it.  I tried to change how I pronounce it.  It didn’t help.  It wasn’t mine.  It isn’t me.  I resigned myself to the fact that, perhaps, I just am not “strong.”  I am not a woman who has the strength I am supposed to have.  Not strong enough.  Not strong, though, is weak.  I don't want to be strong, but I definitely don't want to be weak.

But I started this post to be about gratitude.  And it is—really—if you made it this far, stick with me here until the end.  I am not strong.  I don’t want to be strong.  I don't have to be, I've realized, and the weight that takes off my shoulders is liberating.  For the first time, I don't feel that I have to be strong.  The change I’ve noticed is that, most days, I am more confident.  I am looking the day square in the face, ready for what it brings me.  I am greeting the world with eyes wide open, willing to give and slowly—but slowly—willing to receive.  Trust is a long time coming.  Once it’s lost, I don’t know that you ever fully get it back.  But it’s coming.  And it’s not because I’m “strong.”  It’s not because of some reserve of strength I have stored somewhere inside me that I am able to summon when I need it.  It’s not because I have some inherent strength to pull it all together and keep marching like a good soldier should.

It’s because I’m resilient.  Resilience is not a trait, but a process.  It’s the “bounce back” process.  The “get up and try again” mechanism.  The ability to find the people, resources, supports, and thoughts I need to cope, navigate my environment, and move forward.  It is not something inherent in me that I have because of these or other events, or something that I just happened to be lucky enough to be born with.  It is, in part, because I do have access to the things I need.  It is in part because of my personality and who I am as a human being.  In short, for me, I see resilience as a power I have, and that is important, vital, precious.  I don’t believe things happen in our lives for a reason.  I also don’t believe that bad things happen to teach us something, to show us how strong we are, or to test us.  I believe that things happen.  Good things happen.  Bad things happen.  What we do with that determines where we go in our lives.  Not who we are—but where we go. 

I don’t know where I’m going, but I know that this resilience—this power that I have as I navigate my internal and external world, is something I want to celebrate: to sing it, praise it, shout it in whatever way I can.  For that, I am truly, undoubtedly, and immensely grateful.

Not a Love Poem

Andrea Gibson, on her Facebook page, recently posted a status that said: "write a love poem to one part of yourself you haven't learned to love yet." I read that and thought, "ooh! I can totally do that!" So I tried...and I tried...and I tried...and all my attempts came out completely pathetic. Or rather, nothing really came out at all. I'm pretty sure my muse has abandoned me. The way I've neglected her recently, I can't say I blame her.

This poem, apparently, was what wanted to be written instead. Each word was like pulling teeth, but it was written. I doubt it will appease my writing muse enough to come home, but there are words in black and white. That means something, always.

What about you? Can you write a poem with Gibson's prompt? Or what about an un-love poem, as I seem to have written? Regardless of which one you write, remember that the words on the page mean something--always.

Not a Love Poem

I’ve never written a love poem
--certainly never to you—
my poems
are more anxious than loving,
bitter, not doting,
have more anger than passion,
my poems
travel existential roundabouts
instead of lovesick highways
to impossible stars.

I’ve never written you a love poem because before
I publicly declare my love for you
I need to break off this thing I have going.
It’s nothing serious but I’ll
have to go through the break-up phase:
the boxes of tissues,
the chocolate,
the sappy movies,
the sleepless nights.
I don’t want to nurse a heart so broken,
don’t want to risk the violence:
I know she’s no good for me, but self-doubt can be
a jealous lover.

I’m not writing you a love poem because
I can’t find the pieces of my broken heart:
I left it out like a jigsaw, and tenderness
was just one of the piece that got chewed on and batted
to no-mans land with the dust and old change.
Don’t blame yourself.
It’s me, not you:
watch me striking out again
one…two…three…
I close my eyes and miss the ball knowing
a home run would let me
run home
but I’ve been running for so long
like ET and Dorothy, I just want to get there
so I get on my bicycle and pedal like hell
click my heels three times,
throw pennies into wishing wells.

Follow me
around my existential roundabout
as I pedal and click, throwing old change at it all:
I’m not writing you a love poem.
I have no idea
how.

On loving the world

When I was in 4^th grade, I completed a homeschooling curriculum on World History.  I had a fantastic history book that was easy to read and did not read at all like a text book.  I remember reading the chapter on Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.  There was a section on the city-state of Sparta and the culture of the Spartans.  When I read about the Spartans leaving babies that seemed weak (i.e. those unlikely to succeed as soldiers) on a hillside to die, I went to my mother so distraught I couldn’t even explain to her what I had learned through my tears. 

That memory serves to remind me that, perhaps, I am indeed hardwired to be the person I am.  From the time I was tiny and my mother had to glue together pages of my wild animal picture books because I was upset about the picture of the lion killing its prey, I have been rather unnaturally sensitive.  Over the years, I have learned how to better harness that energy.  How to manage it so it does not overwhelm me.  I have learned to channel my passion for caring.  I would be lying if I told you this has been an easy road.  Time changes you, though, and painful personal events shape you and change your ability to tolerate comfort and discomfort.  Your life perspective, and who you are as a living, loving person in the world changes.

I work in a job now where my heart could—and sometimes does--break on a daily basis.  I have worked to be able to handle the stories I hear because, just as I was born to cry about Spartan babies dying on hillsides, I was born to hear stories.  Through stories, through interpersonal connection and dialogue, through contact with other human beings, we come to understand our world.  Through living and engaging with others honestly, we open ourselves to change our souls, or bodies, and our minds.  When we engage ourselves with honesty, the possibilities and potential for change is endless.

There is a certain vulnerability that comes with honesty that makes it frightening.  Professionally, I fear that “this child’s story makes my heart hurt,” can sound like “I can’t handle what this family is telling me.”   I worry that “this family stays on my mind long after I see them.  This is a case I bring home with me,” sounds like “I have poor boundaries and can’t separate my personal and professional life.”  I  assume that statements like “I nearly became tearful in session as the mother described her current circumstances” sounds like “I cried because I felt so bad for her” or “I became overwhelmed with my own personal reaction and couldn’t handle mom’s affect.” 

But I hold strong in my conviction that it takes courage to love the world.  It takes courage to wake up every day and walk out into the world, ready to love again.  Putting oneself in a position where your job requires you to extend that love on an intimate and interpersonal level, in all the myriad of ways we can show our love for humanity, is an act of bravery.  Hearing stories, sharing lives, moving towards healing and health and wholeness, whatever that means, is a radical act of compassion and love.  Acts of courage and bravery leave battle wounds and scars.  These wounds leave our perceptions of the world irreversibly changed, and yet, the bravery that is valued seems to be the bravery to carry on as though you are unshaken. 

The courage that I live is simply the ability to hear it all, and to love the world again.  The bravery I live is the ability to soak in stories and continue to be open to holding them, to telling them, to making them and breaking them down to deconstruct them.  The bravery I live is the ability to sit with the people the world seems to have ignored so long they have been forgotten.  The wounds I carry are sometimes physical, but more often and more substantially, lie in the intimate knowledge I hold of the pain in others’ hearts.  The battle scars are in my eyes as the lenses with which I view the world become obscured with knowledge I’d rather not have. 

And yet, I listen.  I open my heart to the breaking and healing.  And I continue to love the world.

Giving Gifts

In a moment of hope

I read you my poem.

I knew you wouldn’t understand

but read it anyway,

like a child wanting

a pat on the head

a smile

a thumbs up

a high-five:

I’m not particular about the ways praise

can find me.

You looked baffled, asked

what I plan to do with a

box full of writing.

Asked if any of it was

worth saving.

Long ago you taught me the rule:

when someone gives you a gift,

you smile

and say thank you.

It was so long ago

I'm sure you have just

forgotten?

"Pennhurst Asylum", or, whatever happened to compassion and respect?

 So the other day I got an email alerting me to this: http://www.pennhurstasylum.com . Needless to say, I got pretty angry. Okay, really angry. So I wrote this letter, which I will be sending to various people. If you have any suggestions, or if something is unclear, let me know. I encourage you to write a letter as well. What the heck is wrong with the world?

October 25, 2011

To whom it may concern:

Halloween is, certainly, a fun time of tricks and terrors.  I understand that, currently, Halloween is a time where the scary, evil, supernatural, and odd are brought out and celebrated.  In the past several decades, Halloween has evolved into a time for scary movies, haunted houses, and haunted hayrides, all activities that can certainly remain harmless and pleasurable for those who enjoy being frightened. 

However, as an advocate for persons with disabilities, and as a predoctoral intern in psychology working with individuals with disabilities, I am outraged by the fact that the former Pennhurst State School will be used as a tourist attraction.  Per your website, you are aware of the history of the school, as well as the abuse and suffering that occurred there.  The historical treatment of people with disabilities is certainly a dark spot in American history and, while much has improved, the lingering effects from these views remain in the varying ways we continue to stigmatize people with disabilities and people with mental illness.  The fact that the known suffering, abuse, and death of former residents of Pennhurst State School will be used as “entertainment” is unacceptable. 

Historically, persons with mental illness and people with disabilities have been perceived as “evil,” supernatural, and something to be feared.  Although these beliefs are not generally held overtly by individuals in today’s society, there continues to be significant shame, stigma, and fear surrounding disability.  “Pennhurst Asylum” as a tourist attraction perpetuates and capitalizes on this oppression and stigma.

Pennhurst State School, and many state schools and institutions similar to Pennhurst, closed in the relatively recent past.  According to your website, Pennhurst began the deinstitutionalization process in 1986; conceivably, there are individuals and their families in the community who survived the horror of living in the actual institution.  The trauma resulting from the inhuman treatment of the people living in the institution is one that affects not only the individuals, but also their families, their communities, and the country as a whole.  Having worked in several facilities for individuals with disabilities, I have personally met, worked with, played with, and laughed with several older adults who lived in various institutions and “state schools” for the majority of their lives.  The impact of these environments on some of society’s most vulnerable citizens is unforgivable.  As people with disabilities attempt to move forward from this time in history and establish their place in society, they continue to work to obtain such basic human rights as safety, freedom, independence, and accessibility.  The daily discrimination, segregation, and barriers faced can be daunting, and the disability movement is largely unnoticed by mainstream society.  By opening Pennhurst State School as a tourist attraction and sensationalizing the horrors of that point in history, “Pennhurst Asylum” is contributing to the marginalization, oppression, and segregation of a population within our society. 

Unless a society is unable to acknowledge its historical mistakes, history is bound to repeat itself in some way.  By sensationalizing the abuse and suffering of a group of people, “Pennhurst Asylum” is not only condoning the acts that have occurred in the past, but also allowing this and other forms of oppression to continue in the future.  Basic respect for the suffering, abuse, and trauma of people is the very least that can be done in a historical location such as Pennhurst State School.  From that respect, I can only hope that we as a society can move towards much needed, and long awaited, respect for the personhood and autonomy of persons with disabilities.

In Peace,
Autodidactpoet

Please write a letter?  You can take ideas and even pieces of mine if you would like.  On the email list I got this through it suggested writing a letter to the Pennhurst people, but also writing a letter to your legislators (particularly if you live in PA), writing a letter to the editor (again, particularly if you live in PA), posting about it on your blog, posting on your Facebook...

A snippet of conversation...

 “Who's there?" Bubby says as soon as I open the door.  I walk into the family room and her face lights up.  "Hi Pussycat!  Thanks for coming.  It's so good of you to come.  You can't stay long, you're busy. Come sit down.  You'll just stay for a little bit.  I can’t offer you a thing.  I don’t know what’s in my Frigidaire and I can’t get up, I…”

“Hi Bubby,” I say, kissing her cheek before taking the seat she indicated.

“How are things?  I can’t offer you a thing…there’s water in the kitchen.  And a glass.  And maybe some nosh, I don’t know.  I can’t offer you a thing.”  She says “water” like my dad does, so it sounds like “wooder.”  I am momentarily embarrassed that I trained myself to say “water” instead, just like I taught myself to say “on” instead of “oin.”  Bubby’s house is synonymous with “nosh” in my mind, and I feel a pang that there is nothing to eat on the table, not because I’m hungry, but because it’s symbolic of the changes occurring.

“Things are good, Bubby,” I say, taking off my jacket.  “I don’t need anything, I just ate.”

“How’s school,” she says before I’ve finished.

“Work’s good,” I say.  She forgets I’m not still at school and can’t really understand the concept of an internship.

“You work hard,” she says, nodding, like she knows she’s right.  “You always work hard.  All my kids work hard.”

“How are you feeling?” I ask, trying to get a word in before she asks another question.

“I’m fine.  That school you go to, it has a good reputation.  I never hear anything bad about it.  You do good work.  You work hard.”  These are not questions, they are statements.  “And you love it.  You work hard but you love it.  You work hard but you love what you do, baruch hashem.  You work like a dirty dog.”

“Everything is good though, Bubby,” I say.

“You never complain.  You work hard and you never complain.  You cook for yourself?  You make yourself dinner?”

“Yes Bubby.  I…”

“I think that’s so good.  All you kids cook for yourselves.  I don’t cook anymore.  I put the thing from the Fridgidaire, from the – the freezer--in the…um…the…I put it in the…um…”

“The microwave?”

“Yes.  I put it in the microwave and…that’s it.  I don’t cook anymore.”  She nods, finalizing her last statement

“That’s okay, Bubby.  And you’ve got people helping you here now.  Don’t they cook for you?”

“Yes, they cook, the other day she…uh…what’s her name?  Not this one.  The other one.  The one that comes here sometimes.  At night.  She comes at night.  She made chicken.  It was alright.  She made it in the kitchen and gave it to me, and it was alright.  It was alright.”  She continues without taking a breath.  “Your father won’t let me drive anymore.  And the doctor, he doesn’t want me driving anymore.  But I told them I know I can’t drive right now, so we’re just going to wait and make a decision later.  We don’t have to decide now.  I’ve been a good sport, but I’m not going to give that up.  I don’t go far.  I go to the beauty shop.  I go to…you know…just right up here.”  She points.  “Down…” she points in the other direction, “you know…McDonough…no, not that one…Liberty…down near where Aunt Jean used to live…anyway, I go down to…you know that place to buy groceries.  I go down there.  And I go to Betty’s.  And I visit Aunt Faygie.  And that’s it.  That’s all I do.  I don’t go anywhere else.  But they say I can’t do that, and I tell them they can’t take that away from me yet, for the thing there.  But that’s what they said.”

“Well Bubby, I think everybody is really worried right now.  And you have all these people here helping you that can take you where you need to go.  You just tell them you need to go to the beauty shop or go shopping and they’ll be happy to…”

“We’re not talking about it.  I don’t go far.  I just go to the beauty shop and to visit Aunt Faygie and…”

“It doesn’t matter how far you’re going.  Things can happen, even just going down the road to the beauty shop.  Things can happen in a parking lot.  You know that from when you hit that pedestrian before…and everything was okay that time, but Bubby, you’ve got to listen to your doctor even if you don’t want to listen to Daddy.”

She laughs.  “He takes good care of me.  I know he just…he worries.  Does he worry?  He worries.”

“We all worry, Bubby.”

“I know, we all worry about everybody, honey.  We all worry.”

“We’d worry less if we knew you weren’t driving.”

“We’re not talking about that,” she says.  She folds her arms to let me know the conversation is really over.  There is silence for a moment as I listen to my heart pounding in my ears.  How do I contradict my 87-year-old grandmother?  She isn’t a scary woman, but in this blur of a conversation, my heart hurts as I try to figure out how to be her granddaughter and also protect her.  How to convey my respect of her authority and age and wisdom.  How do I give her the respect I need to give based on the very fact that she is my Bubby, and also let her know that she is wrong.  That I disagree with her.  That I am in a position where I need to protect her.  This is a woman I have never seen cry, even when my grandfather died.  A breast cancer survivor, a woman with 14 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren, my grandmother serves 42 relatives for Passover seders.  She makes salads so big she uses garbage bags to toss the lettuce with the dressing.  She yells at me when I carry dishes to the sink, telling me to sit down and stop doing so much.  You don’t disagree with her.  You don’t tell her what she can and can’t do.  She uses lines like “I’m your Bubby and you listen to me.”  And so you do.  You just do.

But none of that matters now, because we’re not talking about it.  That much is clear.  It’s a conversation we will need to wait to resurface and, maybe then, I will have better answers.  Maybe then I will know better how to say it…or maybe not.  Maybe it will still make my heart squeeze in a rhythm not my own. 

“The lady who helps me…you know the one?  She was here the other day.”

“Which one?” I ask.

“You know the one.  I can’t think of her name.”

“Was it Paula?”

“No.  The other one.”

“BJ?”

“No.  The other one.  I don’t know why I can’t think of her name.”

“What about her, Bubby?”

“Why can’t I think of her name!  You know.  The other one.  This is so silly.  Why can’t I think of her name?”

“It’s okay.  Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t get old, kid,” she says.  “Getting old is for the birds.”

I laugh.  “I’ll try not to,” I say.

“Why can’t I think of her name?” she asks again.  “She has the same name as me.”

Finding Home

When I was a kid, I loved going on vacation.  I would wait for it, wait for it, wait for it…  I would look forward to it, ask about when it was coming, be SO EXCITED to go, and then, about a week before it was time to leave, I would balk.  I would start dreading it.  I didn’t want to go.  Vacation meant a change from the routine and, as much as I loved going places and seeing things, I liked the comfort, routine, and ritual of home.  Once we were on vacation, I was fine.  But I loved the feeling of coming home.  I could not wait to pull into our long gravel driveway, to run up to my bedroom, to find my cat and hug her and squeeze her until she was totally pissed off and looked like she wished I had been pulled away by the undertow of the ocean that left salt in my hair and sand in my shoes.

Some things, I’ve learned, change as you get older and others don’t. This pattern of both wanting and dreading change is something that remains constant.  I look forward to changes.  I love the excitement of going places, of changing things up, of seeing something new, of doing something different.  But afterwards, I love the feeling of coming home.  I love the settling into the routine, the calm comfort that brings.  I love the ritual of returning to what I know.  I think it is a good place to be, this loving both sides of this coin. 

If you count college, which I do, then in the past 9 years, I have moved 8 times.  Considering I just turned 26, that means I have moved almost every year since I was 17.  That, my friends, is a lot of moving.   

When I was a freshman in college, I remember talking to a friend who was getting ready to graduate.  “It doesn’t seem like you’re home here yet,” she said.  I was in the middle of what we’ll call “Bad Roommate Experience Numbers 1 and 2” so she was correct, but I asked her how she knew.  I was happy—except for the roommate stuff—how did she know I wasn’t really home?  “Because,” she told me, “you still call your dorm room ‘your room.’  You don’t yet call your room ‘home.’”

And I didn’t.  Not for the first year, because it wasn’t home.  Home was home—home was where my parents and sisters and cats and dogs lived.  My dorm room was ‘my room’ where I happened to stay for 9 months of the year with 2 very different, very—shall we say interesting­­—roommates.  Roommates, however, are a story for another time.  My roommate stories have nothing to do with home.

My next two years at college, however, my dorm room became “home.”  I loved those little rooms.  They were mine.  They were safe, and quiet, and they expressed me and who I was.  College was a safe place with my own rituals and routines and community.  Home was still home—the place with my sisters and my parents and my cat that looked pissed every time I showed up.  I had two homes then: the home of my childhood, and my home with my friends and my community.  I may not have always loved college or known quite what to make of it, but the space I lived in was mine: the community was a part of me and I was a part of it, and that very fact brought me home.

In Ohio, the first year was hard.  I had what we’ll call my “Roommates from Hell” experiences that I can only just laugh about now and, although I lived in a large apartment, I had only one small room I stayed in 98% of the time.  This room was smaller than any of my dorm rooms and had only enough room for my bed, my desk, and a very small path to walk between them.  That space, though, belonged to me.  It was my haven away from the insanity of grad school, from the chaos of living 9 hours away from everything I knew, and from the craziness that often occurred outside of my door.  As I settled more and more into my life in Ohio, it became home.  I had no choice—I was there, and I was in it for the long haul.  The home I pictured in my mind was my home.  My space.  At times, I was homesick for my family and for the scenery of the East coast.  There were times I wanted to see “my mountains” so badly it hurt, but in my soul, I was also home.  The home I grew up in slowly became “my parents’ house,” and whichever apartment I was living in was where I wanted to be when I craved going home. 

There were times, of course, when it didn’t feel like home: the three months I lived out of garbage bags because the apartment was infested with bedbugs.  The time the police searched my apartment for drugs because they smelled incense and assumed I was smoking pot.  The time I felt I had lost the safety and community grounding me and I couldn’t find a place in the world or in myself that felt even remotely like “home.” 

When it came time to apply for internships last year, I seriously considered not applying.  My life felt like it had fallen apart and was only just starting to be pieced back together: how could I leave when I had only just found home?  How could I voluntarily pack up and leave the place that had both torn me apart and also handed me back the pieces?  How could I dare to start over in a new physical home when my own internal home was missing?  I wanted to pull down the metaphorical gravel driveway of my soul and throw myself onto the bed I knew was mine that would welcome me with open arms, as if it had known I was missing and had been waiting for me to come along.  I consoled myself with the fact that I would be going back to Maryland—my original home.  I would be, I told myself, going home.  Home.  I would be going back to a place I once called home.

Perhaps it is because the 8^th time one moves in nearly as many years, it takes you longer to claim the place as home.  Perhaps moving 9 hours away, even if it is to the same side of the country you were raised in, is always difficult.  Perhaps I am just not in the right place.  Maybe it’s because I haven’t given it enough time, or maybe the events of my past few years have led me just to be a little less trusting.  A little less likely to open my heart.  A little less likely to believe I can safely claim a physical, interpersonal, or emotional space as “home.”

All I know is this: this house is not mine.  It doesn’t make sense to me—the house that is--and I still, 4 months later, feel that I am walking into someone else’s space.  No matter how I clean it, it still feels dirty.  The light switches are perpetually in the wrong place.  The shelves are too high, the ants continue to march through my kitchen, and the heat sounds like someone let loose preschoolers with a combination of hammers and tap shoes into my pipes.  There is a distinct sense of not belonging that is pervading my time here.  As I work to continually reaffirm my belief that I am worthy of safety, worthy of community, and worthy of respect and friendship, this feeling of not belonging brings an uneasiness that is hard to overcome.  It is easier, almost, to sit with the not belonging than to challenge it.  It is easier to believe this not belonging stems from the unworthiness I’ve known for the past year and a half.  This sense of not belonging in my body, not belonging in community, not belonging in relationship. 

I know I am not alone in my struggle to find home.  From Dorothy clicking her heels three times, to country singers singing about country roads, to old adages claiming that home is where the heart is and Robert Frost claiming that home is where “when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” it seems this struggle to find and define home is universal.  Ideally, of course, home would not be a physical place.  Ideally, I could walk around knowing that I am home in my soul, in my body, in my heart.  When I have a secure base to go from—when I have a strong physical sense of home—perhaps I can get there, but I would be lying if I said I could find home that easily.  It is wrong to want that physical haven?  That safe place that belongs to me?  The community surrounding me that lets me know, in spite of my sense of unworthiness and non-belonging, that I actually belong?

What is home for you?  Where is home?  Have you found it?  What would it take for you to get there?