A visitor has finally come home

Travelling, studying, working in other places or countries was fun. Different. New adventures. Standing at airports, train stations, bus stations talking to people most said the same: " I've loved being here and there but it will be so good to go home, to where I belong." I had no idea what that feeling was, what they were talking about.

It felt strange, different, lonely in a way, not feeling that I had to be somewhere special. That one place. The "tears in the eyes" thinking about going home. I was feeling many things, crying many tears but never over "home" home.

Many talk about feeling alienated when you come home after a short or longer stay abroad. You don't really fit in, belong any more, you've changed. Others have changed. The place you left has changed.

The thing is, if I'm totally honest, that's how I've always felt deep down. Since childhood. That I was kind of a visitor, passing through.  An "alien" if you like.

Standing at any station leaving a place to go back to Norway I often had no desire to go at all. Of course it would be nice to see friends and family. Sleep in my own bed. But longing and looking forward to see the hills around Oslo to feel complete? No I did not feel it.  It was just my base, where I came from.

One of my manager ones told me: "You're problem is not being afraid of change as most, but that you whole life is about nothing but change. You need change to much. I'm afraid that you don't root." He was absolutely right.  I was not "home" home anywhere, rooted, knowing deep down that this is where I belong.

I was a little envious of others knowing with absolutely certainty where they belonged. Me, I was like a water plant surviving in any container filled with some water, passing through. Sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week other times for years. Visiting not really rooting. Being strange but fine at the same time. Not looking for that one place either. I was many lovely places, meeting many nice people. More than 40 years went by. Life was after all good.

Then one warm day in July I knew. No fireworks, no big emotions just driving on an unromantic highway in a part of France I had never been. An inner peace, a certainty. Finally I knew what many had been talking about. There on a stretch on the highway "between the 2 oceans" I knew: This is it.

I'm home. 

Epilogue: We now live 10 - 15 minutes from that part on the highway. I finally understand the "tears in my eyes" when leaving or going back. I have moved out of the water container. I'm rooting. I'm becoming a real tree. I'm at peace. I belong.