Displace:
transitive verb- to remove from the usual or proper place; specifically : to expel or force to flee from home or homeland – displaced persons.

I have been displaced.  I AM DISPLACED.  It’s a passive state – I am not the displacer, I’m the displaced.  Sounds like I am a victim.  I am not.  Not really.  I had a part in the decision to move.  I am, however, the victim of the circumstances that forced the decision to be made. It was not an easy choice, not the popular choice. A necessary choice.  That’s life, isn’t it?  A series of choices made with the information available at the time of choosing.  A series of choices, strung together like Christmas tree lights, individually weak but together bright enough to light a path, attempting to create a pattern and a purpose.

I confess to this act of choosing as if confessing to a crime.  As is the case with every crime, it is not without consequences, actual or intended. However, unlike a crime the act of choosing or the choice itself cannot be deemed right or wrong beforehand.  That is a subjective determination which can only be made after the act, after the consequences are borne and the casualties tallied.  And so I admit to my part in the choice of moving.  In my defense I will say that there really wasn’t another viable option, that all things considered, this was the best choice we could have made.  And now I bear the consequences.

The consequences of displacement…

For the displaced, Fear and Anxiety lurk around every corner.  Fear of the unknown, of the unfamiliar.  It may include culture shock – it doesn’t matter if the move is from Syria to Germany or Brooklyn to Boston. This is not the place you’re from, not the place in which you belong or the place that belongs to you.  Add a side of Grief and Mourning for the home you left.

For the home left behind, the now empty space you once occupied gets filled by other things.  Someone else is living in your house, filling it with their own life and making it a home that is no longer yours, a home that doesn’t recognize you anymore. Such betrayal.

For the people you left behind, perhaps your place is reserved.  The memory of you is your placeholder, but you must be sure to maintain it.  You must keep reminding them.  Your physical presence is replaced by the memory of your physical presence, of the good times you had, of the tears wiped away, the warm hugs and the locked arms and the birthday toasts.  But there’s only so much room in a person’s life and in time, if you’re not careful, your place will be encroached upon by another – not because anyone wants it to happen but because that space will be needed for someone who is present and whose presence demands a place of his or her own.

We displaced are ships on an ocean.  We occupy a space and displace the fluid environment under us which keeps us afloat. When we are removed, that displaced environment rushes in to fill the space we held.  When in motion, a ship leaves behind a wake, a disturbance of sorts.  Likewise, we create a disturbance in our environment as we move through this life.  And like the wake of a ship, in due course that disturbance calms and smoothes until all signs of our having passed through this place are gone.

Exhausted from the time I wake up in the morning until night.  So so tired.  I just want to sleep.  Yet  I lie in this bed, my own bed, and struggle to stay awake. Struggle to keep my mind moving, to keep my thoughts flitting about like summer moths around a porch light, struggling so as not to settle on the one persistent pervasive thought that lingers just below the surface:  This is real;  these last months, these last 12 days really happened.

It has been said that fear is a great motivator.  I agree.  I am busy all day long, motivated by the fear that if I stop moving, even for a minute, I will sink into a quicksand pool of sadness and depression.  So I fill my days with busy work.  Unpacking, organizing.  Arranging and rearranging my environment to look like the home I left, someplace familiar.  It feels like I’m living in a hotel room that I furnished myself.  Like I’m a guest.  A temporary inhabitant.  Like this is where I stay, not where I live.

I sleep in my same bed, sit on my same couch, eat at my same table.  I dry my hands on my same towels, cook meals in my same pots and pans, water my same plants.  Still…Still, this doesn’t feel like my Home.  I’m not comfortable.  How can I be?  I sit on my couch but when I look out the window I don’t know where I am.  My car isn’t in the driveway, my dog isn’t chasing squirrels in the backyard, last year’s Christmas lights aren’t hanging in the tree out front.  And I know that I am not Home.  In my heart I know that I am not Home.

A pilgrim, although often having a religious connotation, is defined as “one who journeys to foreign lands.”  That is what I am.  A pilgrim.  I travelled on faith, hoping to find a sacred place: Home.

People of faith make pilgrimages to places deemed holy.  There is no holy place here.  I did not journey far from my Home to bow and kneel to my God in a new place. My God was at Home and He travelled with me.  Like any good pilgrimage, my journey was difficult.  I did not crawl on hands and knees, did not scale steep mountains or climb ten thousand steps.  But I may as well have.  Instead, I tossed and turned, I wrung my hands.  I cried ten thousand tears.

I haven’t come here to touch a rock, to kiss a wall, to have a vision.  Like the pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth Rock, I have come for a better life.  I have come on the promise that I will find it here.  I have come because I believe that, in answer to a prayer, God laid out this path for me.  And like those early colonists,  I know there will be hardships and heartaches.  There is much work to be done.

“This hill though high I covent ascend;

The difficulty will not me offend;

For I perceive the way of life lies here.

Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear.”

–Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan 1678

 Still unpacking boxes, trying to “find a home” for our stuff.  Home.  I am wondering if this will ever be Home.

What makes a place Home?  Does physical custody and containment of my stuff in this apartment make this Home?  I think not.  I would say that this is where I am staying (some people actually use the phrase “I stay in X town” when asked where they live).  It doesn’t feel permanent. Doesn’t feel stable.  It’s like the air around a hot grill – wavy and watery, as if everything you see through it is not quite real and could disappear at any moment.

Our culture has many sayings about Home.  “Home is where the heart is.”  “Home is where you make it.”  So far, I haven’t made a home here (I think that takes more than two days), nor is it where my heart is (I think that might take forever).

To me, Home is a concept, an idea.  Like Love, it is impossible to adequately define; words cannot capture its truth.  Home is your history, your memories. It’s a sense of connectedness. It’s a thing you build in a place you choose, a place where you feel grounded, safe, and untouchable. Like in baseball, home plate is what you run for, the point of the game.  Even in the kid’s game of “tag,” there is the notion of “home:”  You run away, but not too far because you need to get back there to be safe;  you run, but you don’t ever want to lose sight of it.  That’s what Home is.  It isn’t so much a “where;”  it’s a “what.”  My Mom always said “You can’t go home again.”  As a child I didn’t understand what this meant.  But I learned.  It means that when you leave a home, you leave Home.  And that Home as you know it, that concept, that essence leaves with you, as a soul leaves a body when the life inside it ends.

By leaving my Home,  I burst the bubble.  I broke the spell.  I can return to that physical place, but it won’t be the same because it is already changed simply by the act of my leaving.  And that act has changed me,  too.  It has taken my breath away. It has numbed my soul.   It has stopped my heart beating.

Moving truck arrived on Saturday morning.  Two days early.  ‘Cause let’s just hurry up and get on with this.  ‘Cause who wouldn’t want to do that ASAP?

So into a little apartment come all of those boxes so carefully packed at home.  With every trip up the stairs comes a piece of our puzzle. Like the squares of a Rubik’s cube that we try to manipulate into order.

We cannot fit our life into this new space!  It’s too big for here.  No number of Tetris-like maneuvers is going to make this work.  All of these things that are part of our everyday life.  These are not long-forgotten relics from the dark recesses of an unreachable shelf.  My mother’s big griddle for the five dozen chocolate chip pancakes I made after every sleepover after every middle school dance.  The Corningware I sent home with leftovers for my brother.  The birdhouse that hung on the front porch.  Accessories  for rooms we don’t have anymore.  Where do these things fit in now?

These boxes don’t contain mere things.  They hold memories. Thousands, millions, an infinity of memories.  Each one fragile, each one as delicate as a spiderweb and just as intricate.  Individually wrapped,  as if they are separate things, as if thin sheets of paper can create boundaries between them, can keep them from returning to the jumbled mess that is/was our life.

I open the boxes as if they are gifts.  With great care I remove each item and hold it lovingly, still wrapped, in my hands, as if it was a swaddled new born baby.  I consider it’s shape, it’s weight, and try to guess what it might be.  Then with anticipation I peel away the paper.  And there is that thing!  That beautiful familiar thing.  That thing I used to do that thing I loved to.  That thing I loved to look at.  That thing I passed by everyday on my way from that room to that room.  That thing made by someone dear to me. That thing that reminds me of someone I love.  That thing that always made me smile.  With each box I grow more homesick.  Every layer of paper I peel away seems to seal my fate.  I am not going home.

Woke up in a sweat this morning, afraid to open my eyes. Afraid that I would wake up in the same place I laid down last night and know that this hasn’t been a long random dream.

If it was all a dream I would search for meaning. I’d wonder if it was a foreshadowing. Then I’d settle on the conclusion that it was meant to show me how much I love my home, as it was. That it was confirmation of my priorities, constant my whole life: family, friends, Home (this coda imbedded in my very genes).

I opened my eyes and wasn’t quite sure where I was, then I recognized these hotel room curtains and the blinking smoke detector over my head and I knew that none of it was a dream. This shit is real. Thirty is the new forty, orange is the new black, and this is the new norm. WTF? Here is the truth: Things are what they are. Forty is not thirty, orange is not black, and this is not “normal.”

We arrived at our destination last night. Unfamiliar everything. Unfamiliar highways to other unfamiliar highways. Unfamiliar streets with unfamiliar names. Unfamiliar faces, places, trees, birds. All under a big wide blanket of unfamiliar sky. I hate it. Probably wouldn’t if I was just passing through, but today I hate it all. Every unfamiliar blade of grass.

I hate that I have to try to like it. I hate even more that I have to pretend to like it, have to pretend to be excited, have to work on my attitude. I’m fucking tired. That’s what I am. I don’t have any energy reserved to pretend or do emotional gymnastics. I will rally for my child’s sake but other than that, today I honestly don’t care.  I’m just fucking tired and I want to go home. Apparently 54 is the new 5.

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“And you may ask yourself                                       What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may say yourself, “My God! What have I done?”

On the road. In one hour, our house will no longer be ours. Not our home any more.

Home was packed up and driven away in one truck. Seven men, two days. Three lives, one life, in boxes. Fourteenthousandfourhundredandtwenty pounds. Big messy life in neat, quiet boxes. Just so much cardboard and tape holding us together, containing us all.  So many memories flooding back as I walked from room to empty room. We took deep breaths. Many deep breaths. Wiped away our tears. Then we closed the door behind us.

The farther we drive from that place that was our home for so many years, the harder it hurts. The stronger the tug back. These tears cannot be held back. These tears are bitter, stinging tears. Tears of loss as powerful as death.

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I don’t know what is waiting at the end of this highway.  At this moment I can’t see forward, only what is now behind.

I trust in a Divine plan and have faith that God has put us on a path to good, to happy, to better. I don’t know why I have to go so far away and give up so much. Maybe it’s a test of faith. Maybe the reward for faithfulness is at the end of this drive. A rainbow to a pot of gold. Or maybe I’ve misread the signs and this is one fucking huge mistake, one erroneous human decision.  Odds are I’ll never know why my path has taken this turn, but I’m on it now. Too far to turn back, too heartbroken to look forward.

Pray that I find peace when I arrive at my destination. Pray that I can let go of regret and self-doubt. Pray that I find home in my heart so that I can make a home for my child.

I pray to see my family and dear friends very soon. I pray that they don’t forget me as my absence grows longer. I pray for some happy twist of fate that will take us Home again.