Wirlwind

Phew!

I'm back at last from my week long trip back to Oregon, and to home. My last few visits had all been awkward, plagued by a feeling of not quite belonging anymore, of being a bit of a stranger. This visit was different somehow, with friends I had not seen in a while wanting to visit, and friends I had not seen in years going all out to provide me a good time. Though only a brief amount of time passed in my actual home town, every time I was there I felt it was "my territory" -- I breathed easier, the air felt fresher, I was much less stressed. Though I have no desire to move back under my parent's roof again, I do miss that feeling of home.

Coming back here to Oly, I feel awkward. Although I feel relieved to be back to my normal routine life, when I look about me at my room, at the apartment, etc... or even at the trees and the landscape, I don't feel at home in the least. While I have left behind -- for that ultimate first/last time, my childhood home, I have not really built myself a home for [i]me[/i] up here. And I realize that, really, I am living in someone else's life. When I see the valleys around me, all I do is contrast their rolling verdant and branch-bedragled slopes to the wide golden plains and fir topped ridges of home. They pale in comparison. Even the light, even the air, is not the same in the least.

I know now that I am not at home here, and never will be, and must seek that elsewhere. I know, also, that that home, for a time, needs to be away from the land of my youth, that I must seek my fortunes, as it were, in more northern climes for a while, and quite possibly this may mean an eventual move further from my home, towards Tacoma or Seattle even. But I also know that when time, and money, and circumstances permit, when it comes time to buy a house, it won't be up here.

As I visit more and more places, and collect more and more experiences, I long more so to travel and see the world about me. But as I see those places, the more I know where my heart must live, and the more I know that one day, I will return to the land called Oregon, and make it mine.