Home is where...

...Your shoes are?
...Your heart is?

Over the weekend I was asked if my new apartment in London was starting to feel like home yet. Its an interesting question, because 'home' is a pretty fluid concept to me. A few weeks ago over lunch with Justin I counted how many times I have moved in my life. Not including two that happened before I can remember, my total is 15. 15 times I have packed up my whole life into a few boxes, and made a home, somewhere new.
Here are the benefits to having grown up like this:
I don't hold sentimental attachment to very many inanimate objects and I don't keep a lot of clutter.
I can pack up my stuff in record time.
I have learned what it takes for a friendship to last through time and distance.
I know the value of my family in ways most people don't ever get to. (More on this later)

Here are the distinct disadvantages:
I believe I have become a person who can't ever feel settled, who always needs to be on the move.
If I can't commit to a place of residence or even a general geographic area, how will I ever be able to commit to a person?
Many (that is to say, most) friendships don't last through the time and distance.
I think I've left little pieces of me behind at every place, and sometimes I feel so fractured that I don't know if I will ever be able to put myself back together.

A few of my friends have had the amazing fortune to have grown up in the same town, some in the same houses, their whole lives. I used to be jealous, wishing I had been granted that kind of life. But now I've learned that in most cases, I am far more adaptable than a lot of people my age, and a lot better at taking care of myself. And in my next entry, when I tell the story that changed the entire path my life was on, it will be a lot easier to understand how I can't really feel anything but gratitude for the way I was brought up, and how I ended up here.

Maybe where 'home' is, isn't really a 'where' question. And maybe the answer doesn't have to be just one place. My new apartment feels a lot more like home since my puppy came to live here. And I think I've done a pretty good job building a home here. At least until the next one, anyway.

When love isn't enough.

My life isn't a movie. In the movies, when the good guy falls in love with someone, she eventually falls in love with him back. Maybe they take a few twists and turns, probably hurt each other a little to figure out that all they want is to make each other happy. And then they live happily ever after. In my life, the good guy falls in love with his best friend, and she can't fall back in love with him. And so they travel in a vicious circle until finally, it has to end.

Tonight, I said goodbye to my best friend. Probably for a long time. Neither of us is dying, or traveling somewhere exotic, or really going anywhere at all. Nonetheless, I know it will be a long time before I see him again. See, he is in love with me. And while I love him very much, I am not IN love with him. Any one who has ever been in a similar situation will be able to explain the world of difference between these two ideas;  loving someone, and being IN love with them. And that the divide between the two can break your heart into pieces.

Here is the thing about all this. I didn't know that tonight we would be saying goodbye, but I knew it would happen sooner or later. We have been walking on a ledge over looking the idea of a relationship, but I could never take the leap. And although we have a history going back nearly 6 years, it isn't enough to bridge the chasm between "in" love and friendship.

But for all this to make sense, we need to go back a bit. Before we were best friends, before love and friendship became such a tangled web that there is no way to see the beginning from the end. There is a lot to tell, and I'll do my best so that maybe, one day, it will be clear to all of us.