Home Is Where I Am
I’ve lived in Michigan longer than I have in any other state—almost eleven years now. As a child I struggled with feeling “at home” because we moved around a lot. After we moved to Colorado, I idealized my early childhood in Pennsylvania, as if that was the only place I belonged and moving away was why I felt so unsettled. If only I could go back to where I came from, then I could be myself.
I wonder now if the feeling of “home” I was seeking had more to do with embodiment and my struggle to feel at home in my own physicality. I was being told from voices on all sides to exist in a state of emotional and physical purity, untouched by any sense of sexuality or sensuality, putting mind over body. So I dissociated. I lost contact with my inner sense of self. I was untethered to my own reality so that I could survive.
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