Uh Oh - It Happened

I was almost certain it wouldn't happen.  I told myself I wouldn't even have to fight it; there's no way it would happen.  Not here.  Not in California.  No way.

And yet, somewhere between church and the gym, tax season and football season, somewhere in the midst of Relay planning and lost in the jumble of the last 13 months it happened.  I woke up today and realized it had happened.

This place feels like home.

This is a special feeling.  I was so so so certain it wouldn't happen and I was unsure whether that was good or bad.  

It's good to feel temporary.  It's good to feel displaced.  It's good to keep things at arm's length so as never to have to pull up your roots and dust off the dirt as you drag them away.  It's good to maintain casual relationships knowing they'll end very, very soon.  It's good to know that you could walk away from your house at any moment without looking back or even the slightest pang of sadness in your side.  The life of a wanderer.

I am almost anything but a wanderer, but for the better part of 13 months I really thought I had put on those shoes.  And I liked it!  Leaving Colorado was hard for me and I don't know how many departures I have left.  Keeping things at a distance seemed safe and ironically secure.

Problem is: it's not me.

I'm sometimes slow to love.  I'm sometimes slow to open up.  I'm never slow to speak, but I'm generally slow to dig in and get messy.  I guess that's how it was with building a home too.  I thought I'd washed myself of the need to feel rooted when really I just didn't remember the process.

In any case, I woke up today and realized this is home.  Our church is home.  My job is home.  Our friendships which stretch from my work to his work to William's school to our neighborhood to the gym - they are home.  We are home.

It's wonderful, but its scary.  Because even though I have still have the ability to attach myself and build a home, I have the knowledge that it will be over.  I'll wake up tomorrow and the movers will be taking our things and I will wonder what life was even like before California.  I will wonder how I ever loved another job, house, scenic view or home.  We may not agree politically...or socially...or economically...or damn near at all, but somehow California has become my home.

As Casey would say, I'm a Texifornian.  And I'm...proud???...of it.