That’s me home [?]
Well, that’s me home again to the great US of A. But you know what? I don’t feel that I’ve come home. I feel like I’ve come back to where I live; to where I’m from.
My trip to the UK was a sad occasion. My brother-in-law, Michael, passed away so I booked a flight as soon as I could. But despite the sadness of my trip, I felt so good to be back there – back home. I really can’t explain why I feel at home here but I do. I am really looking forward to the day when I’m back living in Scotland and I can just pop down to visit my family in England at the weekend.
I’m always so torn on where my home really is. My heart is really truly in Edinburgh (Scotland) and I feel so at peace there; so at home there. It’s a feeling that I don’t know I’ve ever really felt in my home town – the place I was raised; the place my family lives. I feel as if I’m supposed to love my home town and that I’m supposed to dream of it with rose-tinted glasses, but I don’t. Life was certainly good enough for me growing up there, but I never really fit in; never really belonged. (I don’t know that many people would argue with that comment.)
I know that if I return to the UK I will miss so much about America, including my family. But I also know that I didn’t miss America as much when I lived in Scotland as I miss Scotland now that I’m living back in the states. When Paul was alive, I missed Scotland but because we were missing it together – and planning to return together – it made it more bearable. Now I’m not only missing the culture and lifestyle that I so loved in Edinburgh, but I’m missing the dream of returning there with my husband.
If I were able to just pick up and move, I would. But I don’t qualify for settlement in the UK as a widow of a British citizen, which means I can’t go where I most want to go. It’s so very difficult to realise you can’t have what you want. And with an ego the size of mine, not getting what I want is even more difficult.
Anyhow, I’m still working on my applications for graduate school and hoping that I’ll get accepted and be able to afford to study in the UK. I hope that being back there long-term will help me to feel at peace with the world again – with myself again – as I did when living in Edinburgh. I hope that I will feel like I belong somewhere again because I really hate feeling like an outsider; feeling like I don’t belong.
Blah, blah, blah. Guess I’m just feeling a bit sad and missing my adopted home today. I promise to cheer up in time for my next post. Even if I have to fake it!
Fran:
It makes perfect sense to me that you feel that way. I feel the same way about Arizona. I love Washington State; I was born there, raised there, gave birth to my children there, made lots of good (and not so good, and some crazy) memories there. However, at the end of the day, Arizona is where I feel at home. I never liked the weather in WA (as evidenced by my tendency to shovel snow in flip flops), and the culture just didn’t seem to quite fit. I feel as if I BELONG in Arizona, though, I can’t put my finger on the exact reason. I just know.
It was so good to see you last night and today! I hope that your flight home was great and that your day went smoothly after you landed.
Hugs,
~Jeanne
I guess it’s true, home is where your heart is!
I miss Scotland too but I also feel at home in the Pacific NorthWest – it’s where I’ve ‘made’ my family, yet I still have family back in the Auld Country who I miss dreadfully. My dilemma is how to have all this BC goodness around me, yet be close enough to visit family easily.
The immigration stuff is tedious – it hardly seems fair that you cannot adopt Paul’s citizenship. I’ve now got my Canadian citizenship in order to thwart future bureaucracy, mainly thinking ahead for my dually-citizened son and my impending dotage.
The internet is a poor substitute but it has to do.
It seems silly to me that I can’t settle as the widow of a British citizen, too. If we’d been living in the UK and it was me who died, Paul could have gotten a green card as my widower. I suppose I have to honor the immigration laws of the UK though. (Even though I don’t want to.)
It’s not like I live in some under-developed country (though some would argue if they saw my rural farm town!) so it’s fine to stay here. It’s just that I don’t want to stay here.
Oh well. The grass is always greener, right?
(But I DO like the lifestyle of the great Pacific Northwest. It really is God’s country!)