Tuesday 4 September 2012

At Odds

Out And About by foundimagination
I've got that in between feeling again. The one where I feel like I don't belong here, but I'm not entirely sure where I would belong.

I remember feeling like this last summer when Dad was going in for his open heart surgery and we really didn't know if he'd make it through. And although the surgery took place on the mainland, where I grew up, it didn't feel like I was back home.

But, then, coming back here once the surgery was done didn't feel like coming home either. Nothing did, and I put it down to the fact that everything was uncertain and my foundations were shaken.

Maybe that's why I'm feeling like this again now, an emotional flashback to last summer since Dad had to go through something similar, if less life-threatening.

I didn't grow up here, so the friends I have here have only known me as long as I've been here. And when I left home...the place I grew up, I left some good friends, but not a solid group as I'd gone away for a year before high school started and never quite solidly connected with my Grad class group.

So that's perhaps part of it. I don't have deep connections with anyone here, I don't wander around town and see people I went to high school with, or grew up playing hopscotch with or anything like that. My roots aren't here.

Maybe it's also that I don't have a family home here, and my parents have moved a few times since they came over, and are maybe thinking of moving again so there's no real solid home base anymore. And I'm moving too, eventually, so where is home supposed to be?

I imagine that once things settle down again, I'll not feel so displaced. But these moments where I realize I've been here a long while and should be able to feel like I belong here are odd. Discomfiting.

I wonder if it'll ever change, or if home is only ever where you grew up and when it's gone, it's gone.

I don't know.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Victoria,

I understand completely what you're going through. Home for me is London, ON where I grew up. My parents are still living in the same house I grew up in, my bedroom is still a bedroom. We were the new ones on the block, moving there in 1971. Three of our neighbours are still the same. Some have passed away.

I moved here to Cobourg, ON in 1995. I have friends here, but we're still considered the newbies. My friends here are a group of childhood friends, so I don't get some of their jokes and feel like an oustider.

It's even worse now that two of our kids are now off to university. And I'm struggling with my job, and my parents are getting older (but healthy), and my wife is from Quebec...we kinda feel like we don't really belong anywhere.

But...home is our house and that's where the kids come back to. And that's pretty special still.

- Elliott

Victoria said...

I totally get that, Elliott.

Anonymous said...

For me home is where I grew up. Many of the neighbours I had there are still there or if not them one of their children is living in the house.
I left Canada for England in 1997, have been in the same place (Cambridge) since then but when I think 'home' I mean my birth home neighbourhood where I lived for 19 years until my father died.
Our characters were formed there, how easily could we separate ourselves from those places?
Cdn Anne in England

Victoria said...

I agree Anne....