Home without a Home

We've been back in the country for a little over two weeks now, and while I can confidently report that we are finally adjusted to THIS time zone (read: we are no longer waking up at 6am thinking about where to go for dinner and drinks, as opposed to waking up and thinking about what we'll eat for breakfast like normal people do), we're still not completely adjusted to the...I don't know...the HOMEness of being home.

Basically, not a whole lot has changed since Matt wrote that last post, except for the fact that I can now turn one sentence into an entire paragraph like I just did.

Boston has been less than welcoming to us. In the 10 days since we started looking for an apartment in this crazy town, we have seen forty different apartments. Yes, you read that correctly. Forty. Apartments. Which, for the record, is more apartments than we've ever seen in our long history of looking for apartments. Combined. So we still have yet to find a home, but we're reluctant to settle for anything less than something that feels like it should be home. Maybe that means we're picky. I think it means that we decided that we're ready to set down some roots and dammit, we want to set them down somewhere where we're sure they should be set down!

One of the strangest things about coming back from our trip has been that there's a part of me that feels like we never left at all, that we tesseracted through time and here we are again, having experienced a lifetime of experiences that we can't really talk about because we were the only two people there. On the other hand, it feels like we were gone FOREVER and that now that we're back, we have to re-figure out who we are and where we fit. I used to feel this way about my parents every summer after I came home from camp. It was as though I'd just experienced this amazing thing, totally separate from my life as their daughter, and I just couldn't explain it to them in a way that made sense to any of us. Of course, these feelings would usually end in a loud screaming fight sometime around the first week of school, and I'd pound up the stairs to my room, crying and yelling something along the lines of, "you just don't underSTAND meeee!" This is not really an option right now. Especially because running up the steps and screaming at the hotel we're staying in would probably just get us kicked out. But also because this time, at least, Matt and I went through this experience together, so I do get to feel like someone really does understand me.

Not a day has gone by since we've been home that I haven't pictured Sangita's sweet little face smiling up at me from the floor of the orphanage classroom, or thought of the serenity I felt while standing awestruck under the reclining buddha. But when I dwell on these things too hard, when I picture myself turning from Sangita's face and accepting a plate of daal bhatt from Didi, or walking out of Wat Pho towards the madness of the Bangkok city streets, my heart does a little flip-flop and it really does actually hurt a little bit.

Over the past few years, I have come to realize that although I am more willing to talk about my emotions and my feelings than just about anyone I know, I am reluctant to talk about the thoughts that I hold most dear, the precious thoughts that no one thinks to ask me about because they're so used to me just talking all the time about whatever is on my mind. It's a strange thing to realize that even though most of the people who know you would describe you as an "open book," there are times when you feel more private than even your most emotionally-quiet friends. Which I think is the reason that I haven't posted anything since we've been home. When we were gone, the blog was a way for me to connect my life to the people who usually hear about my life all the time. Now that we're home, I don't know where to begin with the stories about how my life was without them for the past few months. So instead I've remained quiet about it all, or at least quieter than my mind feels, trying to blend back into the life I kind of left behind for a little while, trying to feel positive about the fact that we're still more-or-less homeless.

Matt thinks that we'll both feel worlds better when we find a place to move to, when we're more settled into our lives in Boston. I really hope he's right, because it's definitely surprised me that I felt more settled in cities where the only words I could say were "hello" and "thank you" than I do in a place that's supposed to be home.