A Place to Belong

I've been back in Peoria (off and on) for over a year now, and I've still been waiting and hoping for it to feel like home again, but sometimes I worry that it won't ever be the same. The same as when I used to ignore all else and live for contentness of belonging. I can't ignore the things I've learned, the things that have been revealed to me, the things I've felt - the, at times, overwhelming weight of it. I can't go to parties without feeling superficial, I can't go shopping without feeling frivolous, and can't go on a vacation with my family without feeling wasteful, I can't be in this house without wanting to "extend my family", I can't live My life without feeling selfish, I can't sit here without feeling restless.

I've become something different in the past two and half years.

And I worry that maybe what I've become is not what people want.

I hid away in a basement at my local community college for much of this past year, working and creating, trying to be too busy to care that nothing felt right. But I think it's time for me to go out again. For as long as remember, I've wanted to belong here, but that is no longer my only goal in life. I have made a family in this city (I'm not talking blood), it is broken and sometimes it makes me sad, but I would give anything to see this family whole. 


"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."
-Nelson Madela