I seem to have a problem with feeling at home. With landing on a place. Now, when I was skating, that was not an issue. Before that beast entered my soul, no. No, that wasn't an issue. My body rotated like a whirling orbit in space, my right leg kicking out to slow the speed, my left leg softly flexing on an expertly repaired knee and softly and confidently gliding backwards I would go. I was home. I was at home. I was always at home on the ice. That smell. The ice does have a smell to it. As cheesy as the movie "The Cutting Edge" was...that D.B. Sweeney character was right. The ice has a smell...and whatever rink I walked into felt like home to me. My problem? My skating career is over. My skating anything is over. That RSD monster has its claws sunk deep into my bones and its ripping at my physical self and trying to rip out my heart and soul while its at it. Skating is gone. Most things are gone. Skating, hobbies, friends - they have all been cast to the shadows. The thing though, even before I ever heard of RSD, even before any of that started to shade all of the color in my world to just black and grey, I never felt at home anywhere but on the ice.
So there in lies the problem. My home is gone. Well, that's not completely true. I suppose it's more like it's been repossessed. However you want to look at it, the only place I've ever truely always felt at home, is gone. The little town that I've spent so much of my life I've always had a love hate relationship with. It's a wonderful little town. But it's just that. It's a little town. It's got a lot of ghosts. It's got a lot of people I don't want to see when I turn corners when I do venture out on days that I actually muster the energy, strength and courage to do so. I feel like I'm trapped in a box. I feel like a mouse in a box, a maze. I want to break out of this town. We left. We got out of here. We came back on false promises and lies. Now we're here and well....I just want to leave. On days when I have a decent day and I make it out of the house and am able to drive and the kids are in the car, it's so hard to not just press down on the gas and get the hell out of here. I want to blow the dust off my soul, shake the cobwebs out of my brain and get out of this place. It's a hollow place. I have no family left here expect those that are buried under quiet tombstones. They would forgive me for getting out of here and escaping this place. They knew how much I wanted to get out of here anyway, so it wouldn't be a surprise to them. I'm lonely here. I feel like this place is wrong. I feel like I'm dying faster here. I feel like no one would notice if I just upped and left and never said goodbye.
So where is home? The South has always felt more like home. I love out west too, because I love the mountains and I have family ties to both the South and West. I just don't feel any tie to this cold, harsh northeast anymore. I'm ready to get out of dodge. I feel like a racehorse in the starting gates. I've got all this adrenaline pumping through my veins to leave and I just can't seem to get out of here quick enough. When I push down on the accelerator to merge onto the highway I want to keep pressing it. I want to gun and run as they say. I want to be free of this place. I feel trapped and I'm so tired of being the bird in the cage. I don't care at this moment how to deal with the details as the type A person that I am. I feel like I'm going to die waiting on sorting out the details. Every winter I'm here my health takes a bigger hit. I feel like my heart can't possbily deal with that. I am scared I'll have a heart attack or stroke and that scares me. I may have a really sucky shitty monster taking over my body...but I have a lot of life left to try to live and I want to do it to the fullest that I can. I don't want to be robbed of a second of it.
I need to stop spinning my wheels. I need to stop letting this beast get the best of every single second. Living where we do -it wins the battle every winter for the most part. From October until almost May I don't really live. I survive. And I battle to do that. That is not how I want to go through what's left of my life. I'm on the downhill run at this point. I've faced that fact. The good part in facing that fact? Realizing that you need to let go of bullshit stuff that doesn't matter, take stock of the people that matter, let go of the ones that don't and figure this out. So yes. I'm going to try to start being better able to enjoy my life again. I'm going to try to get to a place where I can find hope and love and happiness even in the midst of this shit called RSD. That's not to say that I won't get mired in the pain and not be able to see the light some days or even weeks. I'm just saying....I'm going to try. There's no harm in that.
So....here's to finding home. I want to find my home. My families home. I'm homesick and I just wish I knew where to take us to get rid of that feeling. Honestly, I've been struggling with that feeling for years. I'm nearly 40 and I've been struggling with that feeling for nearly 20 years now. Hopefully I can feel at home soon. It's been a long time coming.
We've been through
Some things together
With trunks of memories
Still to come
We found things to do in
Stormy weather
Long may you run
Long May You Run Neil Young
So there in lies the problem. My home is gone. Well, that's not completely true. I suppose it's more like it's been repossessed. However you want to look at it, the only place I've ever truely always felt at home, is gone. The little town that I've spent so much of my life I've always had a love hate relationship with. It's a wonderful little town. But it's just that. It's a little town. It's got a lot of ghosts. It's got a lot of people I don't want to see when I turn corners when I do venture out on days that I actually muster the energy, strength and courage to do so. I feel like I'm trapped in a box. I feel like a mouse in a box, a maze. I want to break out of this town. We left. We got out of here. We came back on false promises and lies. Now we're here and well....I just want to leave. On days when I have a decent day and I make it out of the house and am able to drive and the kids are in the car, it's so hard to not just press down on the gas and get the hell out of here. I want to blow the dust off my soul, shake the cobwebs out of my brain and get out of this place. It's a hollow place. I have no family left here expect those that are buried under quiet tombstones. They would forgive me for getting out of here and escaping this place. They knew how much I wanted to get out of here anyway, so it wouldn't be a surprise to them. I'm lonely here. I feel like this place is wrong. I feel like I'm dying faster here. I feel like no one would notice if I just upped and left and never said goodbye.
So where is home? The South has always felt more like home. I love out west too, because I love the mountains and I have family ties to both the South and West. I just don't feel any tie to this cold, harsh northeast anymore. I'm ready to get out of dodge. I feel like a racehorse in the starting gates. I've got all this adrenaline pumping through my veins to leave and I just can't seem to get out of here quick enough. When I push down on the accelerator to merge onto the highway I want to keep pressing it. I want to gun and run as they say. I want to be free of this place. I feel trapped and I'm so tired of being the bird in the cage. I don't care at this moment how to deal with the details as the type A person that I am. I feel like I'm going to die waiting on sorting out the details. Every winter I'm here my health takes a bigger hit. I feel like my heart can't possbily deal with that. I am scared I'll have a heart attack or stroke and that scares me. I may have a really sucky shitty monster taking over my body...but I have a lot of life left to try to live and I want to do it to the fullest that I can. I don't want to be robbed of a second of it.
I need to stop spinning my wheels. I need to stop letting this beast get the best of every single second. Living where we do -it wins the battle every winter for the most part. From October until almost May I don't really live. I survive. And I battle to do that. That is not how I want to go through what's left of my life. I'm on the downhill run at this point. I've faced that fact. The good part in facing that fact? Realizing that you need to let go of bullshit stuff that doesn't matter, take stock of the people that matter, let go of the ones that don't and figure this out. So yes. I'm going to try to start being better able to enjoy my life again. I'm going to try to get to a place where I can find hope and love and happiness even in the midst of this shit called RSD. That's not to say that I won't get mired in the pain and not be able to see the light some days or even weeks. I'm just saying....I'm going to try. There's no harm in that.
So....here's to finding home. I want to find my home. My families home. I'm homesick and I just wish I knew where to take us to get rid of that feeling. Honestly, I've been struggling with that feeling for years. I'm nearly 40 and I've been struggling with that feeling for nearly 20 years now. Hopefully I can feel at home soon. It's been a long time coming.
We've been through
Some things together
With trunks of memories
Still to come
We found things to do in
Stormy weather
Long may you run
Long May You Run Neil Young
