Feeling Homesick

I woke this morning to a feeling of home sickness. Odd you may say since I woke in my very own bed. It is a feeling I have learned to accept. There is only one cure for such sadness. Pop in “In Spite of All the Danger” by The Quarry Men into the cd player. In very short order, I felt surrounded by warmth and brightness.


Time is flying past me as quickly as the countryside through the window of a high speed English train. The further I travel in life, the quicker it flies past me. I envision life as a corridor from one place to another. In my mind, life here is not a destination but a hallway leading to another hallway or maybe leading to a final destination.

As I have often mentioned, I feel displaced. How is this possible when I believe that everyone is doing exactly what they were born to do exactly when they were meant to do it? Could my speculations be wrong? Obviously, my logic could be flawed.

My mother used to laugh as she would call to mind days since past when my sisters were in school yet I was still too young to attend. She said I would frequently seek her out as she was busily going about her daily chores just so I could adamantly inform her that I wanted to go home. She would repeatedly tell me that I was already home and there was nowhere else for me to go. She never knew what I meant and honestly, it is so long hence that I can no longer recall what I meant by it either. However, I suspect I do know the feeling to which I was referring. It is a sensation that has never left me. It was the feeling of this morning on this day.

Previously, I believed it was the ‘where’ aspect of my life that was radically out of balance. I felt I was just in the wrong place, a missed turn, a failed opportunity, a destination gone sadly awry. Could it be the universe hiccupped when I was born landing me in Texas when I should have been born in London? Instead of riding my bicycle on a scorching, black topped road, I should have been playing hopscotch in a chilly, key lock park. A girl never has been born to this planet with more love in her heart for all things English than this girl. How can this be? Is it an ancestral gene? Where did this passion come from and why does my niece have the same proclivity? I only have questions. I have no answers.

At cursory glance, one would think this bears an easy solution. The obvious resolution is move to England, correct? Moving and belonging are two entirely different things. Of course, I could transplant myself there but I would always be an outsider. I would never be the real deal. I would never be the receptacle for memories of an English past. Everyone knows that once you leave a place, you never fully belong there again. The second you walk out the door, you are a changed person. So when I go, I go losing all feelings of belongingness to anywhere.

Recently, I have come to think that perhaps that hiccup did not just land me in the wrong location but also in the wrong time. I was born either too late or too early. Still I know, I am doing exactly what I was meant to do at exactly this moment. I was meant to feel this right now, at exactly this place. I was meant to be an outsider looking in, an intruder, an interloper, questioning, feeling displaced, wondering if I will ever find my true place in this world. Will I ever feel at home? As more time flies past, I doubt that I will. That is okay though because I am cool with it. However it plays out, it is meant to be. I so love that. Although you may not understand my mystical and childish ramblings as even I do not, do not scoff for these may be the very mysteries of life that are keeping the stars apart.