Someone Who Belongs Nowhere

On loss, growing up, and taking the road less traveled

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I walk down a tree-dense Pennsylvania backroad as my body sinks into the memorized feeling of This is home. A thick East Coast summer morning drapes over me like a favorite childhood blanket. I drink cheap coffee with heavy cream and listen to a woods alive with birdsong that’s so familiar yet I can no longer name.

My monkey mind urges in hushed tones You are a foreigner. Yesterday we laid my grandmother to rest under an old shady oak in the cemetery on the hill and with her went lingering suspicions that I might still belong in this place. Loved ones have been lost. Loose ends have been tied or burned to a nubbin. The town bustles on and I wander streets like its ghost.

After the service, we moved from the cemetery to an Italian restaurant downtown where we ate giant plates of pasta and meatballs. We talked jobs and kids and houses, commutes and golfing and insurance. Very few questions were asked of me beyond So what do you do? I replied I’m an artist and a writer, and lots of other things, which effectively quelled further inquiry. I don’t blame them. What are the easy questions to ask someone who lives alone across the country, who works for herself, who is without a child, without a spouse? They probably felt similarly to how I did — trying to be kind, smiling, nodding, mind completely blank.

Those who were once kids with me now have kids. I see how quickly time moves, how their babies are now winning baseball championships and getting braces. I know the rest will go fast. Sometimes it scares me, sometimes I worry I’ll regret not taking the well-traveled path of 401ks and maternity leave. Sometimes it feels like everyone has moved on but me. Like my cousins and peers are suddenly grown-ups, and I’m still eating at the kids' table.

I’m reminded of a conversation from Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women. It takes place between Jo and her sister and bride-to-be, Meg.

Meg March : I can't believe today is my wedding day!

Jo March : Me neither.

Meg March : What's wrong?

Jo March : Nothing.

Meg March : Jo...

Jo March : We can leave. We can leave right now.

Meg March : What?

Jo March : I can make money: I'll sell stories, I'll do anything - cook, clean, work in a factory. I can make a life for us.

Meg March : But, Jo...

Jo March : And you, you should be an actress and have a life on the stage. Let's run away together.

Meg March : I want to get married.

Jo March : Why?

Meg March : I love him.

Jo March : You will be bored of him in two years and we will be interesting forever.

Meg March : Just because my dreams are different than yours doesn't mean they're unimportant. I want a home and a family and I'm willing to work and struggle, but I want to do it with John.

Jo March : I just hate that you're leaving me. Don't leave.

Meg March : Oh, Jo, I'm not leaving you. Besides, one day it will be your turn.

Jo March : I'd rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe. I would. I can't believe childhood is over.

Meg March : It was going to end one way or another. And what a happy end.

I empathize with Jo. While I’m not chasing youth like I believe she is, I am also not conforming to a common path of adulthood (which, I agree with Meg, is equally valid). With this comes a feeling of being “left behind” or struggling to find a connection with the same people the way I once did.

My peers and I are past our 20s, a decade when we were generally figuring out who and how we wanted to be in the world. Yet I still feel that fire of discovery and freedom and adventure. In moments of doubt, I wonder if I’m missing a piece, but in moments of strength, I know it’s valid for my life and priorities to look different.

The combination of early adulthood ending and losing the only place in my life I’ve thought of as “home” leaves me feeling like I’m in no man’s land. Like I’m someone who belongs nowhere. Reactions when I say this are typically of the “Awwww, no! You belong!” pity-eyed type. But I am familiar with this feeling. I spent my childhood traveling, so it almost feels like home in and of itself. To me, it’s a freeing notion. When I belong nowhere, I belong anywhere, and maybe even everywhere.

To be rootless is to be prone to moments of feeling lost, but it is also to be free. I am not missing anything, yet I miss everything. The tension of these truths cultivates endless curiosity, creativity, mystery, wonder, awe.

Back to the Pennsylvania woods. Our two anchors — my grandmother and grandfather — who kept us all returning to this place, have now passed. Most of my family has moved away. The next time I see my cousins, their newborns will probably be in school, maybe learning about 9/11 or having their first crushes. All of this leaves me asking the question, who do I want to be by then? How do I want my life to look the next time I see those babies at six, 10, 15 years old?

I haven’t lived long enough to believe I’m some sage, but enough to know the answer is fluid and impossible to nail down. A big part of me has given up on thinking in goal-oriented terms, but I know if I am not intentional, time will slip by. There are no rigid answers, only more questions, creative possibilities, and choosing what feels good in my gut.

I turn up a road and come upon a family of deer, their bottom jaws chomping in circles and white-tipped ears flicking flies. Their legs are so skinny, no thicker than a quarter. I stop mid-gait on the shoulder, eyes locked with a fragile-looking doe. In this moment, I get an overwhelming sense that my grandmother is seeing me through her eyes. I’ve experienced this multiple times since her death — I will be on a hike and a bird flits across my path and I instinctually reply Hi, Gram. A deep knowing floods my system that everything is and will be okay, and she’s somehow sending me a message through these creatures. Thanks, Gram. Love you, too.

I may not have a singular place I will call home for the rest of my life. I may not have a mortgage, a husband, or a baby. I may not have a clear 10- or 20-year plan, but I think here, in the Pennsylvania backwoods, is a snapshot of what I want life to always be like — often quiet, in nature, thinking, in between places, satisfied in solitude, feeling the weight of this human life, and channeling it into creative acts.

A photo of my Gram when she was 17