Home

"And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life

It’s like I just stepped outside

When everything was going right

Another winter day has come

And gone away

In either Paris or Rome

And I wanna go home

Let me go home"

Home - Michael Buble

Today someone learning of the limitations and frustrations of Autoimmune Hepatitis (AIH), asked me if I'd considered moving "back home" to be near people. 

Now I knew the question implied returning to my parents' house to be near them and others in Austin for assistance and support...to make things easier. I laughed as I thought, "I already live at home." The thought of living with my parents is stressful. I know they care but caring doesn't make you a caretaker. The added stress and frustration will only make matters worse.  Leaving my own "home" to be incarcerated in someone else's space is not an option. 

When I was hospitalized and my mother moved in to "help" me, it was overwhelmingly unhelpful. I think my mom views my apartment as her vacation chateau or something. I'm sick as hell and she's telling me what she wants me to cook so she can eat, putting groceries in the basket but no funds on the bill or expecting me to buy her food if don't cook. Uhhhhh, if I can't cook for myself, you really think I should cook for you right now? She is messy, creates extra work, won't take the trash out but will tell me when I need to do it. Hmmmmm I'm on physician ordered bed rest but you're creating shit for me to do that I'm not supposed to be doing. Let's not even discuss having to share a bathroom with someone that has to pee so often, I can't even take a bath without her beating the door down for me to get out. 

Then, ironically, I was watching an episode of Sex & the City and Miranda had a panic attack. She ended up in the hospital and told Carrie she was upset because her parents were her emergency contact, she didn't like them and they lived in NJ; that she was all alone. I know this was a heavy, emotional moment but I literally laughed thinking damn, who wrote that script and what had they gone through to feel as I do?!?!

Over the past few years, there have been moments when I felt overwhelmed and periodically told my best friend I wanted to go home...sitting in my bed technically in my home. Then she'd ask where I felt home was and I finally concluded home isn't a physical location, rather an emotional residence where one feels safe, supported and connected thus making me an emotional nomad lol! 

For three of the four years I've resided in Pearland the one thing I was certain about when nothing in life made sense was that I was physically where I was supposed to be. Pearland was home. I no longer feel that attachment. Maybe I was where I was supposed to be to finally get the right medical answers enabling me to take some sort of control over the situation and now I'm released. Released to go where though?

[side inside note: ...before the end of the week as promised]