Home

I arrived in Santa Monica, California two days ago. Since then I've felt pretty lost. I didn't realise how safe Wickenburg felt until I left it, though I ought to have known given how many times I've been discharged from treatment. Here, with only programming in the evenings, and a lot less structure, it feels scary and unfamiliar. I'm not having an easy transition so far, and I can only hope that it improves quickly. I've been pondering the concept of "home" lately. I think I'm homesick, but I'm not sure what home is anymore. I have nothing job or housing-wise to return to in Colorado. I know I feel terribly out of place here in California. It's not exactly my comfort zone -- I'm not stylish, I'm not a skinny beach babe, I have little interest in the fashion or film industries -- these are the things you expect out of a California girl, no? So I feel out of place for that reason. I feel out of place because I'm new at this treatment program, and I know very few people and am close with even fewer. The idea that everyone else is in a clique I can't break into has haunted me most of my life, and here I am, dealing with it again. When I think back, however, I wonder if that's all there is behind this feeling of displacement, restlessness and lostness. Is it just the location, or is it me? I don't remember truly feeling like I belonged somewhere for a long time -- not since before I was kicked out of my family home. I've had other "homes" but even in those places I felt odd. My last place I stayed for nearly six months and refused to fully unpack my boxes. It wasn't home and I knew, subconsciously at least, I didn't belong. It was much the same with the two places I lived before that, and when I stayed in the upper classroom in my church for several months that was obviously not home. I didn't even have a key. I guess the point is that I'm carrying something with me, some intangible baggage I can't unpack, or won't. I don't have that sense of security anywhere. I don't feel at home inside my own body and mind. I feel lost inside my own self, and constantly want to run away from myself. In the past I did that with my eating disorder. In a very real way the disease became my home, the one place I could run to and feel a little safety. It provided security, familiarity, a sense of rightness to my life -- never forgetting the numbing effect it had. It makes sense that I'm so lonely now, without it available for me to use. Now I wonder, were I okay with who I am, if I had some sense of direction and purpose for my life, would I be able to carry a sense of home with me? Would the restlessness that makes me wander the streets aimlessly just to kill time be replaced with some kind of agenda for the day, some kind of purposefulness? I would hope that. I suspect that until I can firgure out who I might possibly be and accept it, with both the positive and negative, I may feel lost no matter where I am.