The absence of "what next?"

The head space I’m currently occupying is frustrated or stuck or possibly just sad and I feel immobilized by it. I am generally a person of action, I have a problem and tackle it head on. I am nothing if not adept at crafting a two-year-plan and diving into what the next 24 months will look like. For most of my life I functioned that way, life carved out in two-year increments. I could do anything for two years, I conceded. And so I had one and two year stints (occasionally three) all over the world. I saw no reason to change my approach to life.

Oakland, CA- home?

But when I left Uganda in 2011, I left in part because the two year stints didn’t feel quite right anymore. A nagging desire to be rooted someplace emerged. A strange sensation for me to say the least, I have been a nomad since birth. Initially the consequence of my military family, the moving was a mantle I picked up for myself and continued to carry it forward to several states and countries over the years. 

There is something refreshing about being able to start fresh. Something cleansing about getting to reboot. Something challenging about starting from scratch and building a life anew. And I did that time and again. And I have sections of my life that trail behind me in journals and blogs and sometimes random memories of friends. Things I forget until gently reminded. Things that were possible because I was not married to a single location or even expectation for how my life should unfold.

But I came home from Uganda in search of something more familiar; and typing that now I can see the problem that has emerged that I didn’t foresee emerging, even though I should have. What the hell is home? More specifically, where the hell is my home? My entire life home has not been a place. I don’t really understand the affinity people have for hometowns or what that feels like. Home for me has always been at the foot of my parents’ bed. Not exactly the bed itself so much as it is the symbol for home that my heart conjures when people speak of their homes. 

When I’ve been away for a long time - back when I came home from college at break or later between countries- even back when I was in high school and maybe coming in after a night with friends, my sister and I would sit at the foot of my parents’ bed and we’d all talk. We’d talk until my mom fell or asleep or my dad was ready to settle in, and then I’d wander back to my bed feeling warm and loved because that was home for me. My family has always been home. 

My intention, upon returning to the United States, was not to return to the foot of my parents’ bed, or even to the city where my parents live…my intention was to create for myself the actual physical space of home that has always been mythical to me.

Oakland is as close as a physical manifestation of home that I can conjure. Oakland has a community of people that I care about, that care about me. Its architecture and coastlines and weather all appeal to me, the focus on food is in line with my own, the diversity of people feel right. Oakland, in a lot of ways, feels like my city. 

But home?

Home is elusive for me. Home falls into the category of seemingly simple and practical things that so many other people do and take for granted that are so elusive for me. Things like marrying and reproducing. 

This isn’t a lamenting of the life I’ve carved out for myself, so much as a realization that I don’t know my “what next?”. In the absence of a life partner and sans the desire to procreate, the world is limitless. Friends and family see it as wide open space. But right now…right now I feel small in it. Right now I feel untethered not in a freeing way but in a lost way. I am floating without a plan or even the simplicity of the spark of idea that, in the past, preceded the inception of my plans.

I have been discussing my lack of direction and confusion with my community for a while now. I’m tired of talking about it. Tired of holding the uncertainty and plan-less-ness in my own head, tired of unleashing it on those that love me. 

The truth is…I want to know what next? I’m not in flux but this state of mind feels very much like flux. I don’t want to be where I am forever and yet I don’t know where I want to be next. And in the absence of a “what next?” I feel stuck where I am…wanting but unable to send myself back out into the world.

I could blame Oakland, blame the desire to make tangible my intangible understanding of home. But Oakland is just a symbol. Oakland represents the first time in my life that I settled into the idea of where I am being the best place I could be. The first time I doubted the possibility that the unknown before me might reveal itself to me something not worthy of the effort of leaving. And so I cling to this place in a way I have never clung to a place before. Cling to the idea of this being the destination rather than simply part of my journey. 

Maybe I’m holding on to tight and what I need to do is loosen my grip…I’m attempting to loosen my grip.