Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted--almost a full month! Our internet got shut off for a while (funny how that happens when you forget to pay the bill for six months:-P) and then I just got really busy with work. Today, though I've had a million things to do, I've managed to let myself think that the work will get taken care of in its own time.
Ray and I are leaving for the U.S. this week and we'll be gone for all of Ramadan. It's Ray's first time going to the States. I haven't been back for a year now.
I've been so excited, possibly the most excited I've ever been about anything. I'm finally going to get to show Ray all the places where I grew up and experience with him so many things that are normal for me that he's never done. Like hiking through a forest, fourwheeling, WhiteWater, and Wal-mart.
But I have to be honest. I'm a little afraid too. Maybe even more than a little. As I said, I haven't been back in a year.
Though it's never strange for me to be with my family, it's always strange to be back in the U.S. In Marietta. In my house. It's not my house anymore. I hear many people here in AD talk about 'going home' for the summer. I wonder if they feel the same way as I do. A little bit homeless.
Between 2006 and 2007 I spent maybe a couple of months in the States. Most of my time was spent between Haiti and Abu Dhabi. The times that I was in the U.S. were very strange. Shopping malls made me nervous and I found that I no longer knew how to talk to people who spoke English. I felt like a foreigner. Like my home was no longer my home. I think I realized then that my sense of home that I had always felt through my childhood and young adult years was gone.
Since I moved to AD in 2008, every time I've gone back to the States for a visit I've found this feeling of homelessness is stronger. I see that Life has gone on without me, and that sense of rest and relief that one associates with 'going home' seems to taunt me from some place that no longer exists. My haven, my own little corner of the world...I don't have one. Yes, this thought does make me cry sometimes. Because sometimes I'm tired, or afraid, and I just wish I could run home, but I don't know where that is.
I have some thoughts that comfort me though: I know I'm not alone. I know there are other people who feel the same. And through history, there have been some amazing people who also had no homes. Secondly, I know I'm living the life I chose, the life God planned for me. If I had stayed in my old life in the U.S., I would have always wondered what could have been.
Deep down inside me, I know the rest and relief of 'home' I'm looking for don't exist in a geographical location. I may not know exactly how to find them, but I'll keep searching. Who knows, maybe my home will find me.
