Home-lessness

I've been thinking about something my friend Erin said a while back. She was talking about Boston--where she's lived for almost 8 years now, since we started college. She told me that even though she's lived in Boston longer than she's ever lived anywhere else, it's never managed to feel like home.

I know what she means. Even though I really love the Bay Area, it doesn't feel like home either. I don't really feel like I belong here. But then, that's always been the problem. With the Bay Area, with Boston, even with Colorado. I suppose Colorado feels like home, but I don't belong there either. Colorado is the place I miss when I am not there--the blue skies, the dry air, the mountains, the "forests" made up of scrub oak and aspen trees. Colorado is the place where I feel most like I could be comfortable--but at the cost of sacrificing my political, hell-raising side.

I've never been really comfortable in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. I'm not political enough, not hipster enough, not enviro-vegan enough, and not hip-hop enough. And I'm not willing or able to become any of those things to better fit with everyone else.

So where does that leave me? Ungrounded. Rootless. Home-less. At least I'm in good company. Sometimes I feel like San Francisco is a city made up of nomads, of home-less wanderers--we're people who'll hang around for a while and then move on, all of us looking for that same elusive sense of home.