An abiding restlessness permeates the skin, flooding muscle and bone alike.
It clings to hair, covers the body, fills the mind, overflows into the soul.
No location feels quite right. No place offers even a second’s peace or relaxation. The knife is always on edge, the muscles always taught, the mind always on alert, the body always in motion.
This is what it is like to be homeless in your own skin.
There is no rest. In bed, the urge is to remain awake. Awake, the urge is to sleep. Driving, the need is to be sitting still. Sitting still, the push is to get moving. The next place, the next stop offers some hope, but it soon dissolves like salt into warm water. Just keep moving on, a vagabond in your own life, unable to settle down, incapable of finding peace.
People surround, filling in empty places, but even the familiar is now a stranger, the sight of anyone, everyone a cause to flee to – Where? Where to go that offers any hope?
A memory lingers – or is it simply the reminder of a mirage? -- of a place that once was home, a place where heart, mind, body and soul felt at ease, was comfortable, found contentment. It is out there somewhere, isn’t it?
It is not out there somewhere. It is out there with someone. Because home, the saying goes, is where the heart is. This is what happens when the heart has been given to another. When the heart no longer abides inside, but belongs to a place and a person who has taken it far away. Where, then, is home?
Home is a person. Home is completeness. Home is peace. Home is where heart, body, mind and soul finally can rest easy.
But there is no going home. A lifetime ban has been issued. Home is off-limits. Home is out of bounds. Home is unreachable. Home is unattainable. Home is for someone else.
All that is left is restlessness, unease, no peace.
There is no home, or hope, for the weary.
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