Lost

Here I am again.  A place I knew well only a little over a year ago.  A place of self pity, of not knowing where I belong.  It's not a pretty place.  It's dark and lonely here.  I am still wife, I am still mom, I am still a daughter of the king.  That should be enough.  It should be all I need.

This weekend my home church held a celebration of 150 years.  In pictures I see faces of family and childhood friends.  I see those who once taught me in Jr. Church and parents whose children I once babysat.  I wasn't there.  I couldn't be.  I  live too far away.  I wonder if anyone noticed.  Was I missed by anyone (besides my mother of course)?  I am no longer a Hoosier except by birth.  I am only one who visits now.  I don't belong there.

Michigan became my home.  There I was close enough to my hometown to drop in regularly.  I made my life there as a young wife and mother.  I faced hardships there and through them found mentors and friends.  I have only been gone a short time and I love to go back knowing friends await my visit but again I am now only a visitor in a place I once called home.  I don't belong there anymore.

So here I am in Minnesota.  Starting to feel settled but still uneasy to say I'm from here.  I am about to be uprooted again.  Plans are made around me for a future day when I won't be here.  I just started to feel a sense of belonging and now I don't.

And then there's Iowa.  It is my future though I've never laid eyes upon it.  I try, I really do, to talk about the move in a positive light.  There are positives.  I know there are but the reality is that I do not yet belong there either.

I want to be around people.  I want to cling to those I've grown close too.  Yet being around others is one of the hardest things.  I can't answer their questions. I don't even know what to say most of the time.  I try to hide my pain and tears but only create the awkwardness I'm trying to avoid.  I don't even know what it is I want, what it is I yearn for.  I don't know who can understand when I don't understand myself what is going on in my head.

I am lost.  It is easy to go through the day to day motions of moving.  I need an address and a move date so I can feel like I am accomplishing something.  Without those things I am left to eventually go to the emotional and mental part of the move and there I wander.