"You can't go home again...

...But you can shop there"  Martin Blank (John Cusack)

Reflecting back on this last week of vacation and really this last month, I have realized why I have been feeling so sad.

I don't really have a home.

I am not close to my family.  Anyone that knows me has heard how I do not spend much time with them.  My family never really showed much interest in me when I was living there.  It is not my home anymore.  I hate going back there.  All it does is remind me of when I was growing up miserable.  Of course Martin was being a bit more tongue in cheek with his comment, seeing as how his childhood home was bulldozed and a convenience store erected in it's place.  But the spirit stays the same.  Once you leave, you change and so does it.  It is not home anymore, it's just a place you used to live.

I cannot call this place home either.  It used to feel that way.  When I had a house with some of my closest friends, it felt like home.  We watched out for each other, cared for each other, struggled together to survive.  But then we all went our separate ways and that family fell apart.  Then I moved back, and I lived with some new friends.  We started to do things a family would.  We fed one another, we listened and loved.  Then one got a family so to speak and left.  Then another moved in with closer friends. Now those left seem to be stuck in this miserable state where none of us want to be here.  The love in this place has gone.  It feels empty.  And suddenly, so do I.

That's the rub I guess.  I have always thought that the family that matter isn't the one you are born into, but the one you choose and find.  I still believe that, but I also realize that your bio family cannot ever quit being your family.  Sure they can stop talking to you and cut you off, but they cannot ever stop physically being your relatives.  A chosen family can fall apart.  They can decide to stop being your family.  They can leave and cause this void to grow into you.

Maybe I am just being too sensitive or too emotional.

I just want to feel the warm embrace of a home again.

As long as I can make her happy I am doing something right.