When I was a child growing up in Kentucky, I belonged. I knew my family was all
around me, both extended and immediate. I knew my neighborhood and what alleys
would get me where the fastest. It was my home, my city, my whole world. I knew
the color of the sky when a thunderstorm was coming, or worse that sickly green
color the clouds turned before the sirens went off and everyone hid from the sky.
I knew the smell of green grass in the summer time and the way it made my legs
itch if I rolled around in it. All that and a million other things—just normal
stuff that children absorb about the place they grow in.
When I landed in Colorado, I had none of that.
Colorado is so different from Kentucky it might as well have
been the moon to me. I was completely lost and alone and deeply afraid. (And
altitude sick like you wouldn’t believe). Louisville sits at around 300 feet
above sea level and Colorado Springs is at 6,000 feet. That is an incredible
difference. It just added to my misery. I hated Colorado for everything it
wasn’t. I didn’t belong. Then my father
moved us even higher up into the mountains and we were at 8,000 feet. Ugh.
(Drink water folks, if you climb in elevation. Trust me on this. Drink it until
you are quite certain you will slosh if you move. I wish someone had told me
that when I got here so, you’re welcome.)
It has taken me years and years of living here and even loving
it to realize the sense of belonging I was looking for wasn’t going to come
from outside myself. No matter how long I lived here, I felt just that
slightest bit apart from. Going “home” was always my back up plan.
I’ve jumped back and forth between Colorado and Kentucky
several times over the years. I discovered to my deep disappointment, that you
really can’t go home again. Once you
leave a place, that place keeps going and changes in a million and one
microscopic ways that you can’t define, but you can feel. And it hurts. It hurt
me anyway. Your mileage may vary.
Belonging is a state of mind. You can be taken in by a place and still hold
part of yourself apart. I have a pet
theory that every place has its own spirit and power. I was always slightly out
of tune with here. I wouldn’t be so bold as to presume after one revelation I
was in tune and in sync with a place, but I’m a lot further than I was before
it.
Happy is a flame inside, the higher it burns the warmer you
feel. Belonging makes me warmer.
