There's no place like, uh, whatever.

I’ve been here in Utah for about 4½ years. Within that time, I have moved 5 times. (What can I say? I get antsy sometimes.) As a result of moving so frequently, I live light. I don’t own much and the stuff I have is pretty portable. I don’t feel like I’ve ever put down roots here in Salt Lake.

On top of that, my parents left my hometown in Texas a few years back and moved to a tiny little town in rural Maryland. (That's weird because, before they moved there, I don’t think I’d ever thought of Maryland as a real place.) So when people say, “you can’t go home again,” they really mean it; I can’t go home again. Because there’s someone else living in my house.

Maryland doesn’t feel like home to me because it’s not my home, it’s the place where my family lives and I go visit a couple times a year.

All these things culminate in my mind to a sense of general displacement. I don’t feel like I have a home in the connotative sense of the word. Sure, I “have a home” in that I “have a place where I keep my stuff and sleep at night” but that’s my current home, not my home home. So I’m left feeling rather detached from any physical place. Over the past 4 years my life had changed a great deal. Most things haven’t remained constant.

Except . . . (shudder) . . . my job.

This place is very familiar and (dare I say?) homey for me.

Yeah.

The one home that I have here is the very place that is slowly sucking away my soul.


How sick.