Finding home

Four and a half years ago I left the states, feeling lost, sick and tired of the political situation here, and exhausted with the American dream which seemed like an endless pursuit of “more”. I came back about nine months ago and I didn’t know where I belonged anymore.

I hid out at my mom’s, my sister’s, friends, relatives. Nowhere felt like home. I took a job on the east coast. Why? Why not? Why not try Virginia. Maybe it would feel like home. I started a maternity leave job, moved in with a girl temporarily into a condo, which felt like a prissy hotel room. After three months, that didn’t feel like home either.

I felt like a nebulous cloud of a being. Belonging nowhere, bleeding myself everywhere I went. Spacey and uncontrollable. Impulsive and going where the wind took me.

So I took a camper RV trip with my new boyfriend, testing the strength of our new relationship. We towed a 21 foot camper through the southeast. The Carolinas. Georgia. Florida. For a month, we moved our home from site to site, hauling it with a ten year old Chevy Trailblazer. This with a guy who I’d known for less than four months. After a short reprieve in the outer banks, the trip continued again to Bonnaroo a month later. Two more weeks on the road.

We’d perfected the arrival and departure, resembling the old couples who frequented the RV parks where we were living on the road. Every day we got up and made tea and coffee on the stove and had breakfast at our diner table. With limited clothes, life was simple. Despite the nomadic life we were leading, I had finally found something that felt like home. Waking up next to the ginger beard and green eyes. Skinny little man like a boy curled up next to me. Kissing me awake in the morning, his whiskers tickling my cheeks.