What is home? I think the saying that home is where the heart is is really saying that home is where one belongs. The greatest sense of homelessness is to feel there is no place one belongs. Home is friendly familiarity, a place where one feels safe.
Maybe I'll never feel that I belong. Perhaps I'm just making the adjustment badly. But I can't feel that I really belong at USAFA. I mean, I know everywhere is messed up, but I just can't feel that I belong there. Slaving away over a bunch of techie stuff I don't care about and listening to a lot of propaganda that I don't quite believe. I have no friends there. Outside (i.e. at church), yes. Cadets, no.
Is it really the right place to be? I don't know. I don't where I should be. Part of me has given up hope that I have a place to live, not just survive. I don't know.
It's a horrible feeling to be visiting one's own room. It's where I've lived for the last 10.5 years, and I always come home to it being really clean.
The world I grew up in disintegrated when I left. Sierra died 2 days before I in-processed. The debate league I loved split. So did my fencing club. People grew up. Some moved on and others moved away. Things changed. It's not so much that I don't quite fit here anymore, rather that that world doesn't exist anymore. And I've learned quickly that USAFA is no place be oneself openly.
I guess I'm a bit lost right now
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It will never be the same. Not just home, friends, family, places... God has blessed us with what time we have, and sometimes to withhold further blessings -- for what reason, other than His glory, God only knows (pun intended).
ReplyDeleteI know there will never again be a spring 2009. Or, for that matter, summer, fall, or winter 2009 or -- and this one hurts -- spring of 2010. Never again will all the same people be in the same places, having the same conversations, enjoying the same lives. But we have assurance that what is to come will be better still than what ever could have been.
Wow, just saw this now. Thanks Peter, you're quite right :-)
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