Homesick

I don’t know where home is. Home is people, not some building with my stuff. This became apparent to me the night I went to sleep in the Daisy House, after a cozy Sunday and I realized that I felt as much at home as I ever had in my parent's house. What a contented feeling! Now I just feel kinda lost, like everyone is far away. Erin called it splintered, I call it wandering. I ache for the feeling of someone on the couch next to me - on "our couch" whoever that "our" turns out to be - that needs me to be there for them, that I need as much as they need me. I feel homeless in a sense of the word that may possibly be worse than those who have no bed to lay their heads. I am so looking forward to next weekend and a feeling of normalcy - but how is what was normal 3 years ago normal when it will never be again.

There's a part in A Separate Peace that I always read aloud to my students. John Knowles says that:

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

Just as for Gene Forrester this moment was the war, sometimes that's how I feel about the house. I chide myself for how unhealthy it sounds. But it's so true. It's like I measure everything from that time, as if that was life. As if I was most "me" while we lived in the house. But then what is this now? It sounds way depressing (and at the moment it is) but sometimes it's just true. I just wish I knew how to stop that ache. And I know that I've changed a lot since we lived in the house, and that life was definitely not perfect while being a Daisy girl (as proved in my journal). It's that home feeling, that feeling of being able to be myself, no matter how crazy or quirky or annoying that happened to be, that I miss. A lot.