There’s No Place Like Home…

That’s what ‘they’ say. (whoever ‘they’ is…)

So what happens when you don’t feel like you have a “home”?

I’m 40 years old.

I don’t feel that there is anywhere I truly call home.

I’ve had times in my life where I’ve felt that I was reaching that point where I felt “at home”…it just never lasted for the long haul.

I realize that home is where you make it.

I do.

And I work hard to make my house a home for my children. I try to help them feel comfortable and confident that they have people around them that love them and support them and that they can always turn to for anything.

Yet I don’t really have that for myself.

My parents live far away (800+ miles), and while we are close enough in our relationship, we just don’t have that “tight knit family” feel. We see each other about once a year.

My sister (only sibling) lives even farther, and we have never had a close relationship. I have been the bane of her existence in her victim sense that I was the favored child…she is my older sister and I was the doted on daughter who got everything I wanted out of life. (her perspective, not mine)

I have created “chosen family” in every place I’ve lived. But when the number of places I’ve lived in the past decade is now at number 4, it makes the process of making roots and developing traditions difficult.

Not that I gave up creating traditions or attempting to sink roots in each place…but the break up of my family unit over the course of this same decade has been a blow that has been hard to come to terms with for all these reasons of always desiring a place to call ‘home’.

The last move was a mere year prior to the ultimate demise and struck a thorn in the side of family development. Not to mention the kids are older and ‘playgroups’ weren’t exactly available for pre-teens as a way to become more familiar with people and start forging relationships. New adult friendships tend to arise out of shared life experiences…and many adults are already mired in their OWN family “home” of sorts, so not really looking to forge new deep friendships.

I realize that all of this doesn’t eliminate the opportunities or possibilities to make friends or develop my life in this new surrounding.

It just makes it challenging.

And depressing.

Because I’m 40 and I don’t really have a place to call ‘home’.

Thanksgiving was enjoyable yesterday. The kids all helped me cook and each one took on a dish themselves. We had turkey and all the trimmings, we played games together, we watched some movies (even the classic Casablanca just so they could say they’d seen it!) The kids had a traditional Thanksgiving of sorts. It was just a very quiet affair. Just us. They made mention a couple times about how this was the first Thanksgiving where we haven’t shared it with others in many years. (last year they were with their dad, the year prior we shared with neighbors, then the year before that was three months post D-day-every year before that was a huge affair with at least one, usually more, families joining us)

Don’t even start with Christmases in the past…

…and this year I don’t have the kids. So let’s not even go there and how that feels to not have your family on the largest family holiday of the entire year.

I’m 40.

And I have no place that feels like ‘home’.

…and that really sucks.

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