I am so homesick right now that I could just scream. The kicker is, where I currently live is not home. Where I was before I came here definitely was never home–nor did I recognize it as being in any other place I’ve ever lived prior to that. I don’t know where home is, otherwise I would go there and happily stay. Maybe I will never find it. Maybe I’d rather go to sleep and never wake up again, if that is how it’s going to be.

Some people say home is where they lay their head or hang their hat–how very lucky for them. Some say it’s where the heart is. There is no heart where I am now. There’s definitely no love, that’s for sure. This is the most (okay, second most) indifferent place I’ve ever been. Of the places I’ve lived in the past, there are two places that I might be able to bear living in, and only because there are a couple (and I do mean only two) people there who are genuine about giving a damn. I don’t fly under their radars unintentionally like I seem to do everywhere else. I’m not unseen there. One of those places is still missing something for me–I’d go there to hide from the world. Right now, I kind of long for that womb-like feeling. But this is the time of year that I first saw it and fell in love with the place, so it’s hard not to feel that way about it. Still, it has a hole in it that I don’t know how to fill, because I don’t entirely know what’s missing. Partly, yes, but not all of it.

The other place is farther north. Beautiful. It provided me with a lot of what I needed to maintain creatively. It, too, has an empty space that I have no filling for. I know what that missing piece is: I can enjoy a place, a thing, a moment well enough on my own, but I don’t believe that all of life was meant to be spent that way. I’m baffled as to why that hasn’t been remedied. Worse still: when it will be. That’s the hardest part–the waiting. There’s a lot of just when I thought recurrences in my life. Stupid as it sounds, I feel cursed. “Destiny”–one of the stories of The Doll Collection: Volume One–addresses exactly how I feel about my life, over and over again. “Write your own life how you want it to be”, people say. Those people are idiots. There’s only so much I have control over. I guess people don’t bother to consider that–and why would they? They are usually the ones who have it all. It’s easy to give advice on achieving perfection and joy when you’re on top of the world, isn’t it? I’m happy for you that you’ve mastered it. I’m not you.

I once told my MIA muse that the closest thing I have to home is my writing, because it has always been there for me–it has never failed me. His ghosting in my regard has once again confirmed that truth. It’s a shame that, with the exception of a tiny fraction of people (devastatingly tiny), people are so good at proving this time and again. You’d think it would make me want to be more and more absorbed in my writing, but it actually makes me crave real life connections more–but they end up being connections that don’t come, or that are failures, or don’t come close to all things imaginary.  Are other people really that lazy? That disinterested? That aloof and unaware? No wonder so many writers are depressed. No wonder so many end their lives. No wonder we are constantly disappointed.

I consider myself fortunate that I have had three really great interactions/experiences in the past five months that have defied reality, even if one of them decapitated itself for who knows what reason. I relish those moments because, frankly, I never expect them to happen and certainly don’t expect them to happen ever again. Would I like them too? Without question. Make this being here among the rampant hate and ugliness of humans worth my while. Heaven knows I bend over backwards trying to make it so for other people. Though the reciprocation received doesn’t say much for the existence of karma.

Home. Maybe I’ll never find it, and in a way that’s okay. I do believe that a worthy (and compatible) travel companion would remove the sting of such a possibility, and the warmth and safety of home surely exists in that.