It's no secret that I've yet to find my place.
Or rather, it's no secret here...in my corner of the world where I write and you read, and the words pour out without restriction.
The argument could be made that I hide it well (though I'd disagree, knowing my limits and failures as I do) seemingly confident and self-assured. I've mastered the enigmatic smile and learned to skirt the edges of the room. But rest assured, I'm scrambling for footing on the inside, wondering why I still feel so home-less.
~~~
One of my earliest memories is of sitting in my childhood room, staring at the yellow gingham wallpaper, counting each little square while muttering over and over..."I don't belong here."
(How very, very right I was...even then.)
It was instinctual...a gut feeling of being, somehow, completely displaced and misplaced...
It was...a mistake...
Me. There. In that room. In that house. In that life.
I was a mistake.
I wasn't supposed to be there.
How very obvious.
My childhood 'displacement'...foster-child to adoptee...marked me as surely as a brand on my face. I was here at someone else's behest...a purchase meant to ease the pain of infertility. A shell into which to pour new life....with a history I had no biological claim to, and a responsibility to be a mirror of my adoptive parents' passions~values~interests~talents~etc... I was, I sometimes felt, a faceless clone of some child they might have had...here, intact, with all the parts and function, but none of the story.
I wasn't supposed to be there.
~~~
An early marriage.
Youthful indiscretion?
Naivete?
Rebellion?
Rather, an overwhelming urgency to tie myself down...to someone and something and somewhere.
A tangling myself up in someone else's roots...claiming both name and history as mine.
A starting point on which to grow a family of my own.
A place...four walls and two arms to call home.
The roots I burrowed into were rotten, though.
The knots I grew entangled with, nearly choked the life out of me.
The family I was growing wasn't safe.
I wasn't supposed to be there.
~~~
Two decades later...almost...and I am still out of sync.
We've lived in this apartment for 15 years, and there's never been a day...a moment...where it felt like home...felt like mine...
Shared space...
our clutter and time intruding on one another...
all the more so when our family expanded to four...
Every surface of multi-purpose.
Every quiet moment at risk of someone else's noise.
This apartment was once a part of the main house. A d.i.y. project of remnant floors and scrap cabinetry. It lists and leans...sloping down from some central joist...creaking and groaning...
The lines have all gone soft.
No straight angles to be found.
"Quirky.", some might say. "Unbalanced."
(Some might say the same of me.)
I shim each piece of furniture we bring in, and regularly spackle new cracks and fissures in the corners.
Too hard of a footfall, and the dishes rattle on their sloped shelves.
Too rough of a door slam, and the knick-knacks shift to precipitous edges.
The apartment was a use of extra-space. A money-maker. A rent-collector.
It wasn't supposed to be permanent.
It wasn't supposed to be a four-person domicile.
We weren't supposed to still be here.
~~~
Motherhood.
Of two.
Or four...with stepchildren to consider.
Family.
And four walls we return to at the end of the day.
A place to 'call home'.
But...not...
They belong to me...these two boys.
I belong to them, perhaps more so.
My body to serve their needs: from early labor pain to the arms that comfort bruises physical and emotional, from soothing lullabies to vicious defense, from pre-dawn to past-midnight toil for their comforts and needs and pleasures.
Mine is theirs. I am theirs. Their mother...their person...their home.
They are my heart.
But we aren't home.
Not here.
Not yet.
This isn't home.
It isn't our soft place to land.
It's just the walls about...the roof above...
We shouldn't still be here.
~~~
We've roots now...little scraggly things digging into rocky soil.
We've built something, surely.
A handful of beautifully wrought connections to people and places.
But singular. Each of them. Singular and separate. No ties that bind one to another...no convergent paths that end in community. Each a stand-alone. Too far apart to bring round one large table. No neighborhood of friends and family and friends who've become family.
Just individual bright spots...meeting places of one personality or other...one shared interest or other.
The temporary friendships of strangers on a train. A shared journey of some miles, but divergent departures ahead.
Familiarity, but not a belonging.
We don't belong here.
~~~
Chapters ahead, unwritten.
Blank calendar pages, and maps to be pored over.
The journey to home still underway...though the travelling slows and stalls...
There's a place...somewhere...
Not here.
Not any of the theres.
But somewhere...
Where we all fit...
Where our sharp edges and quirks match the grooves already made...
Where our unstable balance will become steady underfoot...
Where we can finally unpack and set things just so and feel...
at home.
