Water::Home

An Update

I don’t know where to begin, so I guess I’ll just start right where I am and see where the path takes you.

I’ve been thinking about Home. The concept of it, what it is, and what it isn’t lately.

Moreso, I’ve been thinking about what one should do or what ones actions should be when Home becomes the opposite of it. What does someone do when they’re exiled out of their home? Are unable to return even if they want to? What does one do when their home becomes broken, either by a quick force or by the slow erosion of neglected repair?

What do you do when you are unmoored from Home, or realize that Home you thought it was really was just a ruse, your imagination conjuring up Home when you were really just trapped?

What do you do when your Home becomes a house?

A lot of you will impulsively say “Well, you leave! Pack up and go! Rebuild somewhere new!” but what if you can’t (not just yet)? What if you had unfinished business to tend to? How do you cope with keeping yourself trapped under your own hand due to the bureaucracy of paperwork when Home becomes house. When life ebbs and flows and erodes and exposes the fault lines in your Home, when every day feels like a struggle to maintain even the most polite of conversation. When you give everything you can but still have no idea how to take?

What now whatnowwhatnowhowhowhow.

And what if you’re scared? What if you have no idea how to start over? What if you’re wrong again? Water exposes but also can conceal, what you think is cool and shallow may be deep and dark, you couldn’t have known until you were already taking on water. How do you trust yourself again? How do you calm your nervous system after a lifetime of little earthquakes that shift and tremor your heart?

How do you get back on the boat after a lifetime of being on the rickety raft? I carried it on so well. I did my best every single day of my life. andyetandyet and y e t. I’m still afraid the new boat has a leak in it. Terrified.

But water also runs.
It runs fast like it wants to get back Home. It will plow through fields, parking lots, towns, woods, mountains until it reaches the promised land. water is quiet but it is also powerful and has one purpose in life. To get back Home and not settle for a house, not yet. It gathers strength over eons and bides time before it makes its great escape.

All’s to say - my life is a mess but I’m figuring it out.

And I hope one day - when you see a winter vista come into view once you crossed a hairpin turn after hours of driving with frost bitten noses in a car that carried you like a small miracle over a mountain pass - you’ll start crying for no reason, that rivers will fall from your beautiful eyes.
Because somewhere deep inside you, the water of your soul will begin to run and run and run.
Because it recognizes Home when it sees it.

May we all gather strength, and - when the time comes - you run towards it as fast as you can.
May the wayfinding of your body direct you Home.
Trust it.