I've never liked being alone much, mainly because I don't like the unsettling thoughts I'm forced to confront when there is nothing around to distract me.
Part way through my second glass of Pinot Grigio, alone in my apartment, I'm mildly surprised by my intense sense that I'm a stranger here.
I've often been asked where I come from, or where my hometown is, but I've never really known what to say. Growing up, my family moved a lot, so I never felt like I'd set roots down anywhere. When I was traveling overseas, I said Hong Kong was home. However, to my students in Hong Kong, Chattanooga, TN was my home, and now that I'm back in the city where I've lived longer than any other place, I still feel as though I don't belong.
Why do I feel like this? I've got good friends here, I've even got some people I'd consider to be wise mentors available to help me. I've got a decent roommate, a decent apartment, I manage to make rent and buy groceries every month, I'm blessed to be an auntie to my best friend's precious little girl, I have an adopted brother who aggressively but sincerely looks out for my best interests...
Yet somehow, all of this doesn't seem to outweigh the insecurity I feel in my jobs, the fact that I'm steeped in debt, the lack of opportunity that I feel I have to seize adventures, the doubts I have about who I am, my faith, my destiny, my future...
Disappointment is a bitter, corrosive poison. I feel like my heart is eating itself alive.
I'm sure all of this is far more deep seated than even I can comprehend, but maybe much of it has to do with how I've struggled to readjust to life in the U.S. after my return from living abroad in Hong Kong for two years. When I left the U.S., I was eager to see a new world, to bury myself in new ideas, cultures, tastes, smells, sights...I was addicted to the journey. But I was alone. And the more I learned about new people and places, the more I questioned where I'd come from, who I was, what I believed in, and where I was going.
By the time I returned to the U.S., I was a different person. People who had known me for years felt like they'd lost their connection with me. The way I saw politics, religion, and relationships had fundamentally changed, causing shifts in my nature that I still haven't been able to get a good handle on.
I can understand why people run...why the move from place to place, hoping that somewhere along the way they'll find that magical connection that makes enough of the pieces fall into place. Ever since I've returned to the U.S., I've had a terrific aching wanderlust. Maybe I feel like I need to explore to help me learn and figure things out.
I'm so jealous of Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love. I wish I could take the time like she did to center and rediscover myself. When the film version of the book came out, I salivated over it...I truly covet the chance she had to be able to learn, seek, and heal in such a tangible, all-in, honest-to-heart way.
And this is when realism kicks in, and I wonder if I even have a right to hope for such opportunities; for most people never even get to imagine such chances, much less live them.
This is when I try to remind myself, that while I question my faith, I can still trust in a caring God. I can still find comfort in the fact that Jesus understands restlessness, insecurity, loneliness, disappointment, and heart break. And somehow, because of this, I will have better chances, no matter how unrealistic that may seem. And somewhere, the mothering heart of God wants me to be happy.
A refrain from an old hymn I grew up hearing in church is playing over and over in my brain: "This world is not my home I'm just passing through. . .and I can't feel at home in this world anymore". I know that many people are comforted by the belief that someday they can go to Heaven and escape all the disappointment here. But I want to be at home here, to be at peace, to find a meaningful place, to matter to someone, to see God and beauty here. I don't want to be blinded by all this sadness anymore.
