new year...

Today I walk quietly back to this space and try to pretend I never left. Truth be told, I never really did leave but I certainly did avoid it, didn't I? It appears that I haven't sat here staring at this crisp white screen in all of five months now. But with a new year it seems fitting to come back and say "something".

In all honesty, I have avoided this poor, neglected skeleton of a blog because I felt... fake... and disingenuous. It is supposed to be a place about "home" and every time I sat here, trying to write, all I really wanted to do was throw the biggest two-year-old temper tantrum and scream "BUT IT'S NOT HOME!" It's not home and even in my best Anne-of-Green-Gables-imagination I couldn't see a day that it would be. 

That realization was... heavy. I felt like I had been stripped of my one and only super power. I have always been able to find "home". No matter where I have moved or traveled I have always been able to at least imagine it as my home. I once spent a night in Paris on a layover. I fell so deeply in love with the tiny, converted convent hotel I stayed in that it springs into my mind faster than other places I lived for years, when I scroll back through my past homes. The walls had to be two feet thick and the window in my room opened onto a little alley that had a lone bicycle leaning against the wall. I couldn't dream that scene more perfectly. It rained so hard that, instead of racing around the city and trying to squeeze a year of sight-seeing into one morning, I sat in the lobby and read a book until I had to make my way to the airport. I listened to the sounds and watched the faces and just let myself be there. 

But try as I might, I couldn't let myself "be" here. And to come back to this space and try to write about that was too daunting and...somehow humiliating....and I just stayed away. Hoping all the time that the next day would bring that familiar feeling that has been so very elusive since we arrived here. 

There has been much soul searching, much angst and more than a bit of whining. I still don't know if it's home to me yet and I'm willing to just accept that for a now and try to find a way to feel grounded anyway. Maybe I'll write about the last year, maybe I won't. Right now I'm more interested in "right now". 

And right now it feels very good to be back in this little blog. I never really knew what it was going to be but I did know, when we were packing our apartment in the city, the thought of having this space to go and talk and write made me feel less lonely. Am I too old for imaginary friends? I don't care. 

So, Happy New Year. I hope we can talk again soon.