Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Blog

No place.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

Last night, as I was lying in bed wishing the heat wave would end, my mind somewhere between awake and asleep, the thought suddenly came to my mind that I didn't belong anywhere.

There were two street lights poking through the trees out front, their light bending and weaving across the blinds in my room, leaving stripes on the opposite wall. The shadows from the trees moved back and fort across these stripes and the effect on a half-awake mind was numbing.

I don't belong anywhere, I thought again.

I'm not sure where the thought came from, or why, but the old song "You Belong To Me" started running through my head, a song with lyrics that suggest a kind of gentle possession. Perhaps it was a kind of strange possession, last night, but not of belonging. It was an absence of belonging to a place, a time, a person. It was more a feeling of be-longing.

Mainly, I wondered where I should be to belong, because, suddenly, no place felt like home even if I had red shoes to click the heels together.

Of course, that was last night. This morning is another day. Sometimes I wish I'd just get to sleep right away and not linger so long in between. Crazy thoughts come, there, in that place of no place.

Labels: personal

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2 Comments:

Crazy thoughts? I hope not. I've had the same thoughts.

In one sense [A], you'll always belong to your hometown and vice versa. But that may not be where you belong, in the sense [B] of being understood. They love you and care about you, but they don't get you.

It also may not be where you belong in the sense [C] of where you're supposed to be -- where you need to be to make full use of your gifts.

You haven't said, but I'm guessing that what you're doing in Bismarck is a step toward someplace else, which would mean you already know you don't belong [sense C] back home but probably haven't figured out where you belong [C], and even if you knew, you wonder if you'll belong [sense B] when you get there.

By Michael Bates, at 20/8/08 10:06