Home Is Where the Heart Is!

When I was 19 years of age, my mother and step-father decided to expel my 1st brother and I from their home; my mother came in to my room one day and said she and my step-father had been talking and they decided we (my brother and I) should be sent to Tennessee to live with her relatives.  The thought of this horrified me and I decided to leave home on my own.  This did not work out for me and I ended up living in the back of a welfare motel for about a week.  The windows did not lock.  Somewhere between being petrified with fear and crying all night, I would fall asleep.   I had gone back home to my parents to ask if I could pay them my hotel money to stay until I found a more permanent solution.  My step-father refused my offer and cast me out into the world.  I had never seen such hatred in a person's eyes as he told me I could not afford to pay him enough money to sleep in his bed, use his bathroom, live in his house.  This episode cut me deeply and I still nurse it deep in the recesses of my being. 

Not too long ago something occurred to me.  I am now living in my fifth space some 25 years later and I have never actually felt like I had a home.  I never actually settled into a place.  I always felt the quarters were temporary, that I would be leaving or would be unexpected ejected.  This feeling was underpinned by a fear of losing everything I had and being out on the streets, just like when my parents cast me out.  I became fiercely independent not asking anyone for anything, even when I needed or deserved help.  These feelings were fears that have haunted me for the past 25 years. 

I have been in my current loft for 2 years now.  There was a confluence of circumstances that got me into this place, so striking that I could not help but understand that I was meant to be here.  This time, though, I am making myself at home!  I can scarcely afford to live here, how I am actually doing it is beyond me.  But as long as I can buy food and gas for my car and go to the movies here and there or purchase some books or freak out on iTunes...I am o.k.  Being a home body helps, I suppose.  I love my home.  It is my spiritual center, the battery that re-charges my life on a daily basis. 




Sometimes I despise people and wonder what cruel, malicious fate has place me on this planet, in this time, in this place.  That's when I lock myself inside my little cavern and nurse my wounds.  Surrounded by my furniture, my artwork, my statues, my books, my piano and objets d'art, I could scarely imagine a better place to nurse myself.  I love beauty and to be surrounded by it is like being nourished on spiritual levels.  You can hardly look anywhere in my space without seeing art. 

None of it has any value whatsoever and this does not bother me in the least.  I do not need an original this or an original that.  I cannot believe the ghastly amounts of money people spend on artwork and furniture.  Many of their purchases could fund entire countries!

I have decided to call this place, my home.  I want to make connections here, have memories here, love here, be here and stop running from a past I fear will overtake and destroy me.  Somewhere I am going to have to find the strength to release my parents from their actions, actions which created a sort of monster in me, but which also gave me the life I have now.  They say that, "living well is the best revenge".  I think I live well.  But I also think it's my turn, now. My turn to live free from the demons of my past so that I can see a brighter future.  It's my turn!