Home

Apologies for my recent absence. I've been preoccupied. I've started a great new job working with military families, and I'm moving from Seattle to beautiful Whidbey Island in just a few weeks.

I've always thought I'd be happier as a country girl, rather than the city girl I've been all my life. I guess I'm gonna find out!

Not surprisingly, I've been contemplating the idea of home.

In everyday use, the word usually refers to a place, the place we came from, or more often, the place we currently keep our stuff.

I have a little anxiety meter within me that is always aware how far I am from where I keep my stuff. The further I am from home, the higher my underlying anxiety. It's barely noticable, but it's there, and with all the training in hyper-self-awareness I've done, well, I'm aware of it. (That whole hyper-self-aware thing is not always all it's cracked up to be.)

Normally, that's how it operates: further from home = higher anxiety... but sometimes, I notice something different.

For example, there was this one time, about 10 years ago. I was on an airplane with my boyfriend, a guy I was pretty devoted to. I noticed that my distance-from-home-anxiety-meter was quiet. Its absence was noticeable, and I realized that I felt at home when I was with my boyfriend. Aw. Warm fuzzies. (But he turned out to be a jerk.)

So, I wondered, is home really a person for me, rather than a place?

When I was a kid, I thought home was my parents' house, but now that I think about it, that house was the main place where my mom felt relaxed. I think home was actually Mom, and she seemed most herself at the house, so voila. By association, the house became home.

At other times in my younger days, when I was between boyfriends or apartments or jobs, I had that no-home feeling. Not exactly lost, but also not anchored. It's a vaguely yucky feeling, like that anxiety meter is buzzing loudly with no sign of letting up, and I think it probably contributed to my choosing into lousy relationships once or twice.

A year ago, I moved from Southern California to Seattle, and I brought my kitty Rose with me. There was this one time, during the drive from L.A. to Seattle, at a pit stop somewhere in Northern California, that I realized my home was in the car. I'd attached it to Rose, at that point. I had a very visceral feeling that I was moving my home, and that it wasn't a place. That was kind of cool. She was a good cat.

A few months ago, Rose passed away. I've been living alone, without pets, for the first time ever.

And my distance-from-home-anxiety-meter has started fading. I don't feel it much anymore. Even when I drive a couple hours away for a business trip, or to see a friend who lives that far away, it's not happening.

I'm liking it. It's a relief. I'm hoping this means that at long last, rather than centering my sense of home on another being, it's here, inside my skin. That would be cool.

It makes me hesitant to get another pet, or to let a new man into my life. Sooner or later, I'm sure that hesitation will pass (it always does), but in the meantime, I mean to enjoy being my own home for a while.