Something Not Entirely Unlike Homecoming

I'm home. Back at my address, in the bed I've slept in from the beginning of May until two weeks ago. Now I'm in it and it is empty. There is no one here with me.

It's been awhile.

I went from the maritimes to camp with a one-night stop here. Josh was here that night, in town through a combination of luck and finesse. When I came back from camp he also came up; we went camping on the beach and now he's on the road back to Williams Lake and I'm here, in bed with my laptop, alone.

I didn't feel alone quite so keenly before. This was an adventure, heading north to work, and I accepted a level of isolation. That was part of what I enjoyed about it. Dave's visits were lovely interludes, and though I missed him he was definitely part of another life and when he left I returned to mine here.

Now I am building a life here in the interior, and there's a person in it. Not the casual friendly acquaintanceships I've made with so many people that I enjoy as an ambient source of companionship, but something that pulls so hard it burns and rattles and tears. More, I am bridging the two lives for much longer than I prefer; school will last two more years and in that time I am bound to oscillate back and forth.

And in the middle of that duality of a life I took a duality of a vacation. On the one hand I went to Dave's family, to the lovely family island in the middle of a lake with few walls and no running water and all his family that shared so many of his traits and time spent Doing Things. On the other hand I went to camp and then came back and nested in bed then went and nested again beside a lake where the only other people in sight were on far-away boats with a half-stranger to whom I am intimately and roughly tied.

I came back and went into a grocery store. It had walls and people, worse than Vancouver airport two weeks ago which contained more people in that moment than Fort Saint James. I am having trouble looking at the faces of strangers. I am missing trees. And I am missing rooms full of people who know me and care about me and who might have perspective on the kaleidoscope of my life right now. I feel as if the perspective has been knocked right out of me.

I own a car now. As of later this year I'll have a drivers' license. I can walk through the bush. When I've been outside I feel a hundred feet tall and glowing with well-being. I feel capable in so many ways.

Yet, I am still a student. I am somewhat at the financial and scheduling whim of school. I must live in certain places in certain times. I am transitory in a rented room, with the things I love in a storage locker. I can't negotiate for long-term work or settle somewhere. I can't complete my transition into my new life. I can't remain settled in my old one, so far away from where I am now.

And I am still feeling out a new love, sometimes quickly, sometimes so carefully and softly.

I don't know. But here I am, home.

Let's see if routine soothes the burn of re-entry.