Homesick

I am homesick again. I have been living in Nashville for 8 months now, and I am still begging to be rescued. (The high tomorrow is 23 degrees, and the low is 6, so I am very expectantly, desperately awaiting rescue at present.)

It's funny how you spend so much time thinking about getting away from your hometown, the life everyone you know is so caught up in. You feel bliss when you finally do, feel as though you've triumphed, escaped, made something of yourself--and then one day you look back and feel a great loss someplace deep inside you.

I mean, I know that I couldn't live in Lake City again; what would I do there? I never hated it, really--I didn't complain much about the small town life, wish to live somewhere more exciting. I was content with the open fields and pine trees. But I knew I'd have to get away someday to become something, to do something that was worthwhile to me. It just couldn't happen there.

So here I am in Nashville, putting that English degree to good use, learning to be an adult, grinding through the work week. And I would like nothing better than to be in Florida again, a happy barefoot child with unkempt hair. I miss the beautiful open sky and the sunshine and living in flip flops year round. I miss my family--laughing with my sister, playing with my nephew and niece, watching my mom live her bright, wild, astonishing life. But I know that nostalgia has impaired my judgment; my very memory is tainted with the sentimentality that grows with distance. I call home now and can hear all the voices I love, the voices that drove me crazy just a few years ago, laughing and crying and chatting in the background. I can tell how full their arms are with the weight of their lives, with the fullness, the round, exasperating heaviness of life. I don't belong there any more than I belong here, but I love them better than ever now. I recognize the deep, beautiful place they've found in me, that place that's nestled in with Florida sunsets and forests and cold springs. I can't live there, but I can't live too far away either, if that makes sense.

So I miss home. I miss knowing people, being known. I miss the friendship and the community. But even as I miss it I know that I exaggerate it only because I am so isolated here, that if I were to return I would return to disappointment and to frustration. I would probably be just as lonely there as I am here. We always do think that life, full life, is somewhere else, don't we? No, it is here: in the present moment. It's just not always what we would like it to be. Contentment is so hard, even when you have a thousand reasons for it.

I read a quote once, somewhere, that said loneliness is just a homesickness for God. Maybe that's true. It just follows you wherever you go, no matter how happy, how blessed, how loved. There is always that longing for immortality, for completion, for the divine embrace that makes you forget everything you've ever lived for, everything you've ever loved.