It’s so easy for me to get lost.  Not out in the world; I have a keen sense of direction and no matter where I am in the world I can always point to home.  I get lost in the day-to-day.  I get lost in the house and the kids and my husband and the dogs and the cats and the lizard and the shopping and the cleaning and the driving and the fixing and the trying to slow down the planet so my family doesn’t fly off.  It’s easy to forget what I want, since so much of what I want is for the rest of these bozos I love so dearly to be happy.  They are not.  So, I am lost.

I love to travel by myself because when I’m home there is never a part of me that is not connected to at least one person completely.  My heart is soaring for someone else’s achievements or breaking over someone’s perceived failures. I don’t really want to change that.  The truth is that what holds me onto this spinning planet is them.  I am who I am because I am so deeply entrenched in their lives.  I tremble with anger because they have kept me from a career, from saving the world, from writing a book, from writing a play, from being a working EMT, from having a Search and Rescue Dog, from being a star.  And they have.  But, it is my choice to let them.  I could do all those things — they aren’t stopping me.  I am choosing not to do them.  Why can’t being home be enough?

I grew up in the Seventies and I was told I didn’t have to stay home with children.  I didn’t need a man.  In fact, if I wanted any of that I was weak and a loser.  I could do it all.  So here I am, home with the children, trying to pretend I don’t need a man, and I am lost.  I am lost in the place I most want to be found.

I can’t wrap this up neatly because I don’t have the answer.  It’s too big and it’s too confusing and it’s too deep and I love too much and I’m too afraid.  I don’t know how to do it any differently right now because there are people depending on me to help them to find their way and I have to do that first.  I don’t understand it at all — but for now, I am okay to feel lost.