Looking for Home

I've realized this year that I don't have a place to call home. For someone from the South, where family and home is so important, it is kind of a big deal to not have somewhere to return to. While I was growing up my family didn't necessarily move around a lot, but we did move around every five years or so, usually at key junctions of my adolescence, such as right between the transition into second grade or high school. As a result I never had the sort of long time connections that so many other people form with the people that they have known since they were small, and when my parents moved away from Eufaula after I started college I no longer had even the place I had gone to high school to go back to. I always hate it when someone asks where I'm from, or anytime something wants to list your hometown. I tried to leave the hometown option blank when I graduated because I don't feel like I'm from any particular place. Eufaula was never really home to me, and is even less so now that I don't have any family living there. My parents live in Tennessee now, but I have never lived there and it is even less of a home for me.  Up until a couple years ago when my parents bought their house, we had always rented, putting another layer of impermanence to the places we lived. Add that to the fact that I have lived in in five different homes and three different cities over the past five years (including one summer where I didn't live anywhere and simply couch-surfed for three months) and I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever put down roots. 

The gist is, I never felt at home anywhere I lived growing up, not since I was very small and we lived next door to my grandparents. There has always been a feeling of transience about my life. I always knew that I wanted to leave the South, so in a way I'm grateful to not really have any ties holding me to any particular place. That doesn't stop me from wanting to find somewhere that I can feel at home thought.

 And really, that has been the most amazing part of moving to Portland. It's not that Portland feels like home, at least not yet, but I feel like it could. When I look back at growing up, this is the first place I've lived that I have loved and it is amazing what a difference it makes. There is so much about the South that made me uncomfortable or unhappy - the weather, the politics, the cultural values - and I never felt fully settled or peaceful. In Portland, so much of that stress is gone, and it feels like all my life I've had this weight on my shoulders that I didn't know was there, but now that it's gone it feels so much better. I was walking home the other night and had the strangest feeling, and I couldn't place it. Then I realized that I was really and truly content and feeling at peace. Yeah, nothing in my life is really settled, and  yeah, I could use a bigger paycheck, but somehow, looking around at this city that I've moved to, it all felt ok. Because I love being here, and loving where you are has this amazingly calming effect that I have never known in my life before.