Whatever this is
Hiraeth: A deep nostalgic longing for a home you can never return to or one that never quite existed.
Ran across this today and it shined some light on the distance of my journey. I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same, but I can relate to this. I felt something like this very strongly for most of my life. I thought of it more as mourning what I’d never had and as I define home more as people than a place, attributed it to the lack of close secure relationships in my life. I never felt like I was where I should be. By those standards, things haven’t changed a ton. I do have two relationships now that feel like anchors, like home, but one is with my father and one is with one of my children, so there are limits there, an unevenness. I need to be more the support than the supported. There are things I can’t say. Maybe there are always limits in any relationship and I give these more solidity than they really need to have. Can’t say I know, but the largest impact on the sensation of longing has been a sort of organic redefining of home as something within rather than something dependent on others. I’ve become my own home. Surrounded myself with food for my soul, come to enjoy myself without the noise of others’ judgment. There’s less of that sharp pain of rejection here now because I like my own company, and I’m no longer fixated on how seldom anyone else wants it. The weight of mourning has lifted and shifted into that sweeter nostalgia for good times never had and lovely memories never made with people I never found. I feel more now the comfort of knowing they existed, those people. In a world this big, they must have. If I had broadened my horizons more, maybe I’d have bumped into one or two on a corner somewhere new. That home lives, and its echoes reverberate in the halls of the one I’ve built within myself. I am worthy of it, wherever it is, and that’s the sensation I think that unlocked the door and let me move in.
I don’t know if that’s the “growth” we hear so much talk of or if over time we just learn to create the mirage that will make life more livable or if they’re one and the same and that’s what we call wisdom. I have thoughts and don’t know what they are. Maybe the realest wisdom is that I don’t really care. I feel better and waste less time on sadness that doesn’t serve any purpose. I’ll take that and hang it as curtains on the kitchen window of my “home.” 😌
Ran across this today and it shined some light on the distance of my journey. I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same, but I can relate to this. I felt something like this very strongly for most of my life. I thought of it more as mourning what I’d never had and as I define home more as people than a place, attributed it to the lack of close secure relationships in my life. I never felt like I was where I should be. By those standards, things haven’t changed a ton. I do have two relationships now that feel like anchors, like home, but one is with my father and one is with one of my children, so there are limits there, an unevenness. I need to be more the support than the supported. There are things I can’t say. Maybe there are always limits in any relationship and I give these more solidity than they really need to have. Can’t say I know, but the largest impact on the sensation of longing has been a sort of organic redefining of home as something within rather than something dependent on others. I’ve become my own home. Surrounded myself with food for my soul, come to enjoy myself without the noise of others’ judgment. There’s less of that sharp pain of rejection here now because I like my own company, and I’m no longer fixated on how seldom anyone else wants it. The weight of mourning has lifted and shifted into that sweeter nostalgia for good times never had and lovely memories never made with people I never found. I feel more now the comfort of knowing they existed, those people. In a world this big, they must have. If I had broadened my horizons more, maybe I’d have bumped into one or two on a corner somewhere new. That home lives, and its echoes reverberate in the halls of the one I’ve built within myself. I am worthy of it, wherever it is, and that’s the sensation I think that unlocked the door and let me move in.
I don’t know if that’s the “growth” we hear so much talk of or if over time we just learn to create the mirage that will make life more livable or if they’re one and the same and that’s what we call wisdom. I have thoughts and don’t know what they are. Maybe the realest wisdom is that I don’t really care. I feel better and waste less time on sadness that doesn’t serve any purpose. I’ll take that and hang it as curtains on the kitchen window of my “home.” 😌
