The wind howls its way into my dreams as I lie asleep in a tent made for two. The tent made for two is filled with three, but one is a dog, and so maybe it’s a tent made for two and a dog, because we all fit pretty comfortably in here. The last thing I remember of this particular dreamscape is being blown off the edge of a cliff. I fall slowly, and I’m unafraid. I think a part of me has already recognized this for what it is: a dream. I wake the moment I should have hit the ground, and despite being fearless in my sleep, my heart pounds in the waking world. I steady my breath, and listen to the howling wind. It’s ferocious today. If it weren’t for our presence in this tent, it certainly would have blown away by now. Pancake and Zach sleep soundly, unperturbed, next to me. I sigh and try to settle back into rest.
There’s no way to tell what time it is, except for the cell phone, but the battery died around midnight. The sun isn’t shining, so it’s before 6 AM. The sound of the birds chirping leads me to believe it’s between 3 and 5 in the morning, but of course, I can’t be sure. Insomnia is no big deal in the “real world.” Why they call it the real world is beyond me, because this world feels more real than any artificial environment I’ve ever known. Anyway, insomnia in the life of a yuppie is usually a direct result of their lack of direct sunlight. Their circadian rhythms slowly warped by the use of cell phones in bed. That’s my point though. When you can’t sleep but you’re in a home, you can simply pull out your phone and scroll through useless information until you feel like you might sleep if you would just close your eyes. I don’t always get that luxury. Sometimes, if we’ve managed to score a hotel for the night, I can plug my phone into the wall next to the bed, and when I wake up at 3 am, I can catch up on the latest social media buzz. More often than not, though, I fall asleep in the woods, with a dead phone and a bottle of whiskey.
When the wind wakes me, I have nothing but my own mind, my own hangover, my own lack of water because we didn’t fill the jug before we slept, again. I have nothing but my thoughts, swirling and convoluted. Thoughts of going home, wondering where the hell this “home” place even is, convincing myself that I’ll never be more at home than I am now. “Home is where the hat is hanging,” Ty would often say. I thought it was charming the first few times he said it, but now he says it so frequently that the definition of home has become completely irrelevant, and I recognize the words for what they are. Ty’s just trying to convince himself he has a home. We’re pretending we’re at home wherever our hats are, because we’re never at home anywhere, not truly. We wouldn’t be here if we fit in with our family. We wouldn’t be here if we fit in with society. We wouldn’t be here if we fit in anywhere else. The first journal entry I wrote upon “hitting the road,” went a lot like this:
Home. Such an abstract concept. A majority of my 18 years were spent feeling as if I did not belong. I longed for the comfort of home, without having any idea of where to go to achieve such comfort. I had this idea that home was where you lived; having a roof over your head, but in the past 13 days, I’ve come to realize that is not what home is. Home is feeling loved and cared for. Home is being treated like a human being who matters. Home is a feeling, not a place, yet I still am not home.
I wanted so badly to find my home in the woods, or in the arms of the man who cared more about getting high than anything or anyone. I wanted to find “my people” amongst the dirty kids. Even then, I didn’t feel like I fit in. Some of the homeless people I met looked down upon me, because technically, leaving home for me was an option, not necessity. If I truly had nowhere else to go, I could at least have a place to stay at my father’s. To them, it didn’t matter that I would have rather lived on the pavement than in my father’s apartment. One guy I met, Fox, said I was what they called a “trust fund kid.” They respected me less, because in their opinion, I had more.
So, I found myself a stranger in every world. Yuppies would pass me by, barely acknowledging my existence and dirty kids would let me hang around, but they knew I wasn’t authentic. I was in limbo, with no real sense of self or belonging. Home, I decided, was a made up concept meant to make people feel as if they were missing out. I couldn’t accept missing out, so I changed my reality. Home was irrelevant.
Changing my perspective didn’t help. I still felt like a shell of a human, empty. I did nothing to make my own money, I just stood by as Zach strummed his $70 acoustic guitar, singing in his tone-deaf pitch. Passersby would throw a dollar or two into the hat placed at our feet. I stood, awkwardly, knowing I was contributing no real value to anyone. At the end of the day, I couldn’t make decisions, because the money wasn’t in my pocket. If I wanted to go somewhere, and Zach was unwilling to spend money on gas or entrance, we didn’t go. It was for this reason I was within 30 minutes of the Grand Canyon, yet still have not seen it to this day.
The craziest stories I have to tell come from the time that I was barely myself. I existed mostly as a placeholder, or a chauffeur. The things that happened to and around me then would never have happened to a version of myself that cared about herself. I would not have stood for the things I allowed to happen then. While it saddens me that I could not learn sooner how to love and value myself, I’m simultaneously grateful for the experiences that occurred as a result. The lessons learned. The fodder for my future memoir. It’s hard to say exactly what in life leads to your personal growth, but I know I would not be the B I am today if I had not become B to begin with. If I had remained at home, or gone to college and started a career, I would be someone else entirely. Maybe she would be fine, but I love who I am today. I cannot imagine it any other way. Now, after experiencing homelessness in the truest of senses, both physical and emotional, I can say home is when my body and my mind align. In this life, I am home.
