on being home

    I realized something tonight. Perhaps it will not be the surprise--the revelation--to anyone else that it is for me, but for me, it is a moment too poignant, too exquisite, to allow to pass unmentioned.
I am home.     Oh, I don't mean anything so banal and literal as 'I am currently at my legal address.' It is both more practical and more fanciful than that.
I am where I belong.

I belong here.     The 'here' part of that--that here is the place that I need to be, this apartment and this town and certainly this job--is bound to change. But the sense that I have, for the first time in a long time, obeyed my internal guide, the one who knows these things without knowing why she knows...this will (if I am blessed) remain. I'll not likely hitch myself to another's plans with no regard for my own, hoping all the while that "it'll work itself out somehow, later" (in another life, prehaps?). It's also not that I am disconnected from the lives of my family and friends and the potential for a love that lasts. It's like the title of that film I've never seen: Practical Magic. The title itself has always made me chuckle. It sounds so silly; how would practical magic really be used, to "zap" the dishes clean rather than washing them by hand? But that's what life is like now; I'm hard-pressed to believe in any magic, much less the really fanciful kind. I'm sure it was the divorce that did that. There's nothing like failure in the most important relationship in life to reveal a person, in ways they'd prefer to keep hidden (even to themselves).
     But there is magic, you know? There are friends I'd never imagined--old friends and new friends, and new versions of old friends. And there are, every now and then, rays of light through the clouds of choking bullshit fumes & smog at work, the possibility that it might not perpetually suck. And earlier this week, I got a tantalizing, terrifying glimpse, a sort of teasing preview of what life could be like if a certain wonderful man and I can manage to be good to each other long-term. It was beautifully, exhaustingly, achingly weird. That's probably all that ought to be said on that topic.
     I was thinking about going to the home state for a weekend, possibly for all or part of Memorial Day weekend. There's a sort of family thing going on that I kind of want to attend, but my desire to go doesn't come close to the pressure I'm getting from my parents to be there. (I was apparently much too veiled in my discomfort at Christmas!) I realized rather abstractly that in my contemplations about the visit, I'd characterized the visit as "leaving" and the end of it as "coming home." And the feeling attached to that--to returning to the Flat, to this place, this apartment where I live alone, to my solo bed and my still essentially solo life--was "home." Calm, quiet, relaxed. Even with the frequent financial upheaval. And the idiotic neighbors (I'm listening to Leno as I write, through the wall, brought to you by the 20-y-o guy next door. He switched from Kenneth Branagh on Letterman at 11:00. Oh, back to Letterman again; I guess it changes with the commercials.) And the work bullshit. And, as of Friday evening, having no living room furniture. (Should've been shopping already! Not so smart about that sort of timing thing.)
     But it is home, even in outward chaos. I've got what I need, and much more. Far from bitching, I ought to be fucking wailing with happiness every moment of the day. The best of friends. Not the worst job ever. Enough food to live on. Books to read. A place to write. Someone I love, who loves me, too. Usually. And, what started this whole thing--
I am home.