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.

Dying a little bit more each day

It’s not a joke

It’s real

I am

And you are

So are the trees and the stars

It’s not just a depressing 

Sensation

Seeping through your blood

Drying you up inside

Wishing for your own demise

When you’re standing underneath

The showerhead

Hot water won’t wash it away

It’s the truth.

We are all dying a little inside

Every day.

On Traveling, from Africa Solo

"My anxieties lightened as we went along, a sense of relief and surety building throughout the day. I  found myself increasingly happy to be moving south, away from the  crowded coast. The bus cruised along for hours, stopping in the little farming towns and I kept thinking, I am going. Now I am really going. I felt like an adventurer, researcher, and time traveler , all rolled into one. I felt like a diver bouncing high at the edge of a board, ready to fly into some wondrous dive. Having moved beyond my foreseeable plans, I began to feel the thrill of truly exploring."     - from Africa Solo, by Kevin Kertscher.

I remember thinking almost those same thoughts when I was on the back of a pick up truck converted to a bus in rural southern Thailand heading south... And now, the thoughts could be construed to have meaning in my life back in the states. It doesn't matter much what or where I am going, just that I am going... and feeling the thrill of being alive now.

Medical Care Corruption

Being a medical provider, I find it morally offensive that someone would ask me to deliberately mislead a patient in hopes that they will purchase something that they do not need so that a business can line their pockets with some extra cash.

This has been a theme with a long history in my field and in many medical fields.

When medical care became business and money centered, it ceased to select the best advice for the patient. It became commerce. It became about the bottom line.

When a patient is told they need a procedure or device by a trusted medical provider, it is probably not without some reservations that they would decline the treatment. After all, who wants to wrong their body?

But when the drivers of healthcare are companies concerned primarily with profits and way down the line with healthcare, what do you expect? 

Back on the Outer Banks [for now]

Whispering breezes, birds singing & clanking windcatchers-

it's cold out on the porch in Buxton. 

A few days ago, I was nervous about returning, and starting work again. Anxiety about finding an apartment and the whole thing. One of these days I think that life will feel more settled, but I'm not sure.

Olden days, revisited for my birthday.

I haven't cross-stitched in 18 years.