How can I be homesick for a place I've never lived? I was sitting in my office the other day (okay, it's really a dining room) and looked up at my Bar Harbor mermaid picture that I got from artist Russell D'Alessio and just felt... homesick. Where I live now, I've lived my whole life. Minus ten years in the desert, an adventure, to say the least, but not a regret. It was a six hour drive to the Ocean, a weekend trip, which fulfilled me, sustained me, until next time. A week long trip down the Oregon Coast and I fell in love. Someday, I swore, I would live close to the ocean. I always thought it would be the Pacific Northwest. Somewhere near Portland. Oregon, that is. Certainly not Maine. That dream crumbled when we realized that the west coast was just not US. Too many people. Too expensive. Too close to Planet California.
It's strange. I'm not a swimmer. Or a surfer. Or a sailor. But I've always dreamed of the sea. I've written poetry about the sea. I feel happy when I see pictures of the sea. My favorite colors are sea and sky colors.
I want to be around the sea, not necessarily in it. I want to see it and smell it and taste the salty air.
Then we went to Maine. To be fair, it's the first time I've ever been to the East Coast. Mt Desert Island is the only place on the coast of Maine I've been. But I'm completely enamored. I feel like someone put a spell on me. I believe in love at first site again. I could live there. For the first time in years my husband was happy. I was happy. Celia was happy.
(There are lots of rocks there.)
People tell me I'm crazy. (Not a secret.) They tell me it's really cold in Maine. (It's really cold in Chicago.) They say it's so far away. (Yeah. so...?) You'll have to do better to convince me. Especially when I sit in my car in the middle of the day on Roosevelt Road, in a crawling, bumper to bumper, horn honking, swearing, running red lights type of traffic jam. At one in the afternoon on a Thursday. I ask myself... Is it worth it? Is this what life is all about? Trying to breathe when there are a few million people sucking the air right out from in front of you?
I feel split in half. Half of me isn't "here" anymore. Half of me is wandering the shoreline. Yearning for a simpler life. Fresh air. Room to breathe. Nights dark enough to see the billions of stars that remind me how small and insignificant life is. And to not waste it anyway. The other half of me is surviving. Living in the endless overcrowded suburbs. Signing papers for mortgages and paying $7000 in property taxes and not even being able to get a library card. Watching my husband go to a job every day that physically makes him ill because the indoor air quality is so poor. Seeing my child grow up in an area where I don't feel safe anymore.
I miss the ocean, the salty spray, the waves crashing against the rocks, the seagulls crying. I miss the color.
So now what?
How many of you are where you want to be? Doing what you love? Are you absolutely sure? Can you honestly say you're happy with your life? Do you deserve to be? Or is it an unattainable goal that you just dream of?
And you end up just surviving life rather than living it?
