There's No Place...

As I was just sitting here taking a breather after finishing all my tasks for this website launch, and now have just some down time to relax until it launches officially at midnight, I breathed a quick, thoughtful 'sigh', and thought, "I wanna go home."

No, not the end-all, be-all, last dying breath getting called "Home" sort of home, but back HOME, to the place in my heart that I will forever feel safe, loved and full of hope... a home that doesn't exist anymore, a home where my Mom and Dad were a team, and tucked me in for sweet dreams at night and I was comforted by my blanket of magical stars, where I dreamed through the night of amazing things to come.

So, I took my pants off, opened up the drawer my ex-husband left a bunch of underwear in and searched for a comfy pear of boxers to throw on so I could wind down and try to relax after almost working about 12 hours on website content. I picked through the various styles, and finally grabbed a white pair of sport boxer briefs and slid them on. As I did, I wondered if he ever thinks about coming home.

The two of us both made a lot of mistakes when it all went down, and everything changed... But I still felt like I was never given a chance to even think about saving our marriage. Because of things that happened, he wrote off all thought of any possibility of trying to save what we had, even though I'm more the forgiving type, I guess there are some things men can't forgive... or it was just an excuse, and he simply found the right exit door... which is o.k. It isn't that I have pined for a reconciliation, it's just that I feel a little bad sometimes that for me, there wasn't even a second thought, that because of the circumstances, no second chances, not for me... Everyone else gets them.

I don't talk about this much, but sometimes I just wonder if home ever crosses his mind or if he misses it like I do.  Not the same home of growing up, mind you, but the first 'Home' that we formed as a couple of 'soulmates', saying we couldn't imagine living life without one another and that we'd always be together, always look out for the other, be 'bears' together... It's just sad the way home crumbles to the ground sometimes, I guess it seems to be built on more flimsy foundations nowadays.

Hard not to feel the burn of something like that when you spend over a decade with a person... knowing them like the back of your hand. Well, thinking you know them, their feelings and what they want, until you realize that you must not have after all... That's just part of life... but what a waste.

Then we moved on, and we were left with a now-solid friendship, so much different but still something to be thankful for, especially because I feel quite unique and special given my apparent ability to forgive and love unconditionally.

When the roof was blown off of my marriage, out of cold selfishness on the part of another, I found another Home, but sadly it was a short-term lease on something I could never have, and I was on the 'streets' again.

Now I am trying to learn to build one on a solid foundation, one deep inside the fortress of my own heart. Trying to build it with the finest materials, and the heaviest stones and the most reliable roof. It's inside myself that my real home has always been, though we sometimes stray so far into the wild, the unknown or the dangerous places of the world that we don't recognize it at all when we finally arrive. It's big and empty, and so far I'm a terrible decorator, but I will get there... one day.

Still, when night falls and the cold winter air freezes the scent of so much love gone by, I can't help but long for Home, pieces of home, from every one I have known... One that I can truly call my own, maybe the one I have wished for a thousand times, or dare I say that one in my dreams (the one where I see his face)?

If I'm lucky, perhaps they're one in the same.