Home is whenever I'm alone...

My body had wandered off again. It walked out the door without saying where it was going. It roamed aimlessly, my self inside, imprisoned as a silent witness, for hours and hours, for days? weeks? - time is obsolete for the wanderlust. My limbs had wandered off so far and for so long that my silent self had been growing anxious... "How will I get back HOME?"

I walked barefoot across the beach and I stared out across the ocean, and I trailed up the cliff-lined path watching white globes of fuzz from the dandelion blossoms float abound the pebbly way, and then, where my body sat, I saw the glowing salmon-colored bridge pillaring mightily into the clouds while a perfect white sail boat bobbed beneath in it's shadow. The waves, the most beautiful, enforcing yet pliable, majestic waves stretched across the infinite blue and gold plain. My eyes watched them attentively as they slid into the rocky beach like sex in silk sheets then subtly but erratically shifted emotion to crash and drum against the already diluted boulders, making the sky and peace around my body jerk up in fear of danger. On a far off rock in the water there were birds that looked like small people trying to stay dry as they watched the sun fall down and patiently waited for the tide to curl back into itself as the moon filled the sky.

I later found myself sitting on an outside stoop in the dark smoking a 3-year-old Clove cigarette. A black woman who I had never seen before drove into a parking spot, got out, locked the door, and briskly walked past me as she held her breath and started into the building I was sitting in front of. "How are you?" I heard myself ask.

"Good. You?"

"I'm good," and I felt myself give a polite smile.

I was smoking a 3-year-old Clove cigarette, but I am NOT a smoker. How could I be good? Why did I lie to such an innocent stranger? She didn't deserve the lies my mouth automatically spat out. I needed to get back control of this body.

I read some old journal entries to get some perspective. Apparently in the time I was just going along with my body, 5 years and 29 days, I had wandered to the Lands End region of San Francisco on a Sunday in 2008, and several pages and bindings later and exactly 3 years and 17 days later, I had discovered disgust for myself on a Friday. That was 3 days ago. Within my California wandering, pen ink inscribed my movements and behaviors. I had:

• Moved into a new apartment 6 times.
• Started 4 new jobs, the most recent of which I had taken 3 promotions but never saw a cent added to my salary.
• Sued 1 landlord. I threatened another.
• Saved lives with passionate mentorship and suicide prevention, reproductive health, nutrition, and teen dating violence workshops.
• Witnessed death.
• Contracted a life-threatening bacteria and shat intestinal tissue and blood for about a year.
• Dated 20+ guys... 1 who had a self-tattoo of a skull and the letters "L.I.P" which stood for "Living Is Pain." One who was secretly involved with cocaine. I dated a guy for 2 months before we both officially concluded he was gay. I dated a guy for 1 week who weighed about 100 pounds and never slept, ever. Another guy I dated briefly lived above a car stereo shop and was making a documentary about the car made famous by Back To The Future, the Delorean. Most recently I fell in love with and moved in with a married man. Well... separated. Eventually divorced. Whatever. We were together for over a year and half and he was my first adult love. My first adult heart break.

Flash forward to present day confessions: I'm in a studio apartment that costs more than half my monthly income. There's a hornet that's crawled on the windowsill above my bed since the day I moved the bed in. The shower faucet has two settings: frost bite and hell. The bathroom smells like smoke, and that bothers me. Me, the one who smoked a 3 year old Clove. Those things are made with fiberglass! How did I get here?? How will I get back home?

I idealized my "home" to be like the home in Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zero's "Home," which coincides as my iPhone's ring tone...

Home, let me come home,
Home is wherever I'm with you.
Oh home. Yes I am home.
Home is whenever I'm alone with you.

But now that I'm alone, actually alone, I can see that song is bullshit. God bless it, it is a great song, but it's a song for happy people in happy relationships and big 4 bedroom houses with white picked fences and a 2 car garage with a riding lawn mower and 2 yapping mongrels pissing on everything. It's a song for the illusioned who are also going along with their bodies and buoyantly bobbing through the Bay believing they can BE someone. HA! It's impossible. The home I've propelled my body toward is a manufactured fallacy. Home does not exist... not for the wanderlust... not for the mind-tramp.

Not that home anyway.

Something in the act and motion of breaking up with my "partner," saying goodbye to his family that had welcomed me in, and saying adeau to the friends he had temporarily shared with me, and moving all my furniture and things we shared out of our tiny abode, and letting go of the dream of building a home and a family with him, something in all that has allowed something else to awaken within me. The plug that connects my mind to my body was reattached.

Reattaching is an interesting process. Watch anyone coming out of a coma and you know what I mean. They open their eyes, that's usually the first step. Then slowly... very slowly they regain conscious function of their digits and voice, they become aware of their senses, and they reclaim their human power with their human spirit.

For me, my reattachment (one could even call it my rebirth) began with opening my eyes, gasping for breath, and crying. I wish there was a stronger word for the type of crying that took over me, as its violent nature was incomparable to the cry of cut skin or broken bones, or to that of the misfortune of being laid off from a job you actually like. I heaved with sadness and sobbed until my stomach ached. Reality was too harsh for my vulnerable new self to accept at first glance - I wanted to go back into the womb of my relationship, where happiness was make believe, but at least it was happiness.

I cried until I fell asleep, and when I woke again it was like only parts of me were turned on. I could use my body when I told it to move, but it felt numb. I could follow through with previously arranged appointments, but even meetings with friends looked hazy and ever dream-like. Waves of tears would crash into me unannounced, taking total siege of my attention, and then slowly drift away. I rode this ebb and flow of dazed emotion for weeks.

Then one day I opened my eyes once more and I saw light. There was light at the end of my tunnel vision where the image of the boy used to be. I don't really know why it suddenly appeared - maybe just a credit to time - but I told my body, "Go towards that!" and my body followed. My mind called it's first shot in years, and my legs and torso and butt did as I commanded, and I trailed toward hope.

Still, I had a lot of relearning to do. Specialized therapists needed to be scheduled to help my mind take full and confident control again. I had to take extra vitamins to help my soul stay fueled through the exhausting process. I had to dig deep into my memories to remember what self-love and compassion and intentional, spiritual living felt like, and I had to trust that those feelings could be rebuilt inside my current, previously mindless, machine.

Reattaching is a process and I assure you, I am not yet fulfillingly self-actualized. It's a path to be on - a journey not a destination. Occasional slips of unconsciousness take hold... hence the 3 year old Clove... but I am making a practice in leading with my mind and my heart, not with my body.

Living this way feels like a throw back to my senior year of college, which was the last time I actually lived alone. It was the best time of my life. My heart was free. I walked through the world with a slight skip in my step and a smirk on my face, and I patiently waited for the "real world" to arrive post academia. That was the year I felt truly, indescribably blessed with life; I had very keen awareness of what was important, and I felt the presence of god daily if not moment by microscopic moment.

The circumstances are right again - I'm single, I'm living alone, and my eyes are wide open for the next big thing. With this re-found worldview, each step I take on this journey is a step in feeling more alive, earthed, and whole. Every place I plant my foot, I feel a little more me, and a little more home.