6:59 p.m. - 2015-07-18
when I wake up, will this still be real?
This has always been the goal; it is what I have been working towards for the past 8 years. I have logged the hours, put in the work and somehow made it happen, but it just doesn't feel real. Maybe it won't. Maybe not until I'm there and it's happening. Or maybe never. Maybe I'll always live with this feeling in my heart that I'm not truly home. What's home anyway? The saying is that home is where the heart is. Home to me is this shell that I live in, my body, the skin that acts as my primary protector. I don't feel like I am going home because I feel like home is always with me, in me, is me. It doesn't seem quite real though.
Maybe I have been alone too long. Maybe I am used to being away. Maybe it won't be as big a deal to see me because I'll always be there. That's usually how those thing go. I am excited though. It should be an amazing learning opportunity and it will be so good to be closer to the people I care about the most and see the least. I wish I could take all the people I care about and have them all live in the same place. I know that's selfish, but it's hard to have pieces of your heart scattered across the country; it's one of the adverse reactions of living in multiple places.
It does make me count my blessings though. I feel truly blessed to have met such wonderful people in my life. I often attract challenging situations to me and I have been given amazing beautiful souls that have helped me through them in the past 7-8 years. There have been those that helped me study, housed me, gave me a hug when I desperately needed one, brought me to the hospital, gave me a glass of wine, and helped me move multiple times. I am under the impression that I have met so many earthly angels, disguised in jeans and sweatshirts that hide their wings that anyone else looking on would think we were in heaven.
It is so hard to know the hours that will stretch out across the country between us once I move, but I also know that now it is easier than ever to maintain relationships from a far. It will be similar to how I have been living, but also completely opposite. I don't completely believe it is happening. It really doesn't seem quite real. I feel like I am trapped in that space where you are not quite asleep and not quite awake, where impossible things seem to be happening. What will happen when I am fully awake? Will it still be true?
It's not a matter of going home, because like I said, I carry that with me like a turtle wears its shell. It's a matter of going to where I belong, to where the majority of my heart lives. Most won't understand that, but it's an important differentiation. To keep the heart beating, you have to supply it with adequate blood, so sometimes we need to pick up and move to where the blood is. It's such a simple concept, but one that gets lost among emotion far too often.
"All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be. Home. The dictionary defines it as both a place of origin and a goal or destination. And the storm? The storm was all in my mind. Or as the poet Dante put it: In the middle of the journey of my life, I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right path. Eventually I would find the right path, but in the most unlikely place. " -Patch Adams
