I Used to Belong Here

I think I should have lived in a previous generation, when a person was born in a house then lived there for the rest of her life.  I have a hard time leaving houses.  It seems I put down strong roots.  Home is important to me.

Let me go back 26 years here to begin my story.  In 1989 we moved to a house in Pennsylvania that I loved.  I loved everything about it, fireplaces, sky lights, bay windows, trees in the back yard.  We lived in that house for sixteen years, then decided to move back to the midwest for family reasons.  I mourned for that house for a time after we moved to Kentucky.

Our house in Kentucky was very nice but at first I couldn't help comparing it to the one we had left.  We were close to family though, and it quickly began to feel like home.  We lived there for ten years and I came to love the second house as I did the first.  Eventually we decided to move again, back to Pennsylvania.  We had good friends there and missed what had been a busy social life.

Leaving the house in Kentucky was much harder than I thought it would be.  As I was packing, removing things out of closets and cupboards, I felt like I was dismantling my home, destroying the life we had built.  It was hard and it was sad.  I couldn't imagine not living there anymore.  When the house finally sold I cried.  Someone else was in my home.  I didn't belong there anymore.

We have a new life in a new condo now.  We are back in Pennsylvania and enjoying being close to the friends we made there.  I'm still adjusting to condo life.  When I open my door I step into a hallway instead of outdoors.  I am beginning to accept that someone else is living in what was my home.  I still would not be able to drive by it though, knowing I don't belong there.  I used to belong there.

Yesterday I drove by our original house in Pennsylvania, the one I mourned when we moved to Kentucky.  When we came back to visit not long after the move, I refused to drive by that house.  I cried when we drove past our old exit on the turnpike.  I still felt like I belonged there.  This time, however, when I drove down our old street and saw the house I once loved, I felt okay.  I could say to myself "I used to belong here".