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Last weekend, I got on a plane, with only a few days notice and one oversized purse,
This is quite unlike me, as I would prefer a confirmation number from my cat when arranging
evening pets.
As I sat in our metal flying machine, only millimeters from the closest humans, I was
struck by how alone I felt. How my proximity to their bodies meant nothing,
how the distance from my husband's meant everything. In this craft, I was away. Apart. Absent.
I was far. I was isolated. I was without .
I felt quite brave as I emerged in New York City. As I sat in the back of a car and pretended
to be invisible. I pretended to be unafraid. I pretended to be alone, even as the man who
held my life and his transmission in one hand safely delivered me into the city.
Clawing my way through throngs of bodies, my skin heavy with so many unknown exhalations.
Each breath drawing in the refuse of so many strangers' lungs. Each claustrophobic step
surrounding me with more and more space. More and more distance. More and more loneliness
as the time ticked on without a known face.
And then, suddenly, instantly, miraculously. I felt my home.
My body wasn't in Texas. My house wasn't with me. Not my husband, not
my cats, not my books, not my too many saved episodes of MTV's Teen Wolf, but still. My
body recognized the feeling.
Love.
Friendship.
Excitement.
Creativity.
Trust.
My brain knew that I was on the other side of the country, but my heart.
It could not tell the difference.
These people. These beautiful people are a part of my home, and a part of the life that
I am clawing out of rock for myself and my family.
And being around them, and sharing the simple joy of the precise shape of their eyes, and
the exact color of their hair was so filling and so humbling, and so beautiful, that it
wasn't until I was on a plane again...
Pulling away from that feeling of one-ness, of same-ness, of home-ness, that I realized
that our locations have very little to do with where we rest our hearts.
I was away from home, but I also was home.
I missed home, but I'd really never left it at all.
And when I stepped into my house and into his arms, I was so grateful that my home is
not those bricks. It is this sweet man, and these friends from all over, and this life
that provides me shelter.
It is this beautiful, incredible life that is my home.