Alone

Surrounded by the empty familiar

I have found myself back in the familiarity of all that is Columbia Missouri, yet it is not home because all of those who make it so are not here. I've never been in Columbia during the summer and now I'm glad for that. It's dead- at least to me.
You know what I think one of the worst feelings in the world is? Self-doubt. The kind of doubt that comes from flipping through one of your best friends' photo albums and not seeing your picture more than twice out of fifty. What do you do with that? How can you not feel insecure about that? How many times would they be in your photo album if you had made one, and how many people who are truly important wouldn't make a dramatic or memorable appearance? Who do I do this to?
And then you wonder why you call home your home, and what truly makes it that. Is it real? Does anyone truly love you other than your cat-and he only loves you because you leave food for him on the porch and make him a home with a cardboard box and a strip of old carpet.

The root of it all lies in where one finds her identity. If it lies in surroundings, places, people, hobbies, passions, purpose - she's doomed to feel lost. Daily things are changing- you're changing, I'm changing and sometimes by the minute. Different places near and far. Experiences one can't repeat yet will never lose hold of. Even returning to the familiar after short months of separation things are different and it will only continue. There's no guarantee of the people in a place- that make up a place for the individual- their permanence in body or in spirit. Ever transforming, ever changing, being refined and falling flat on our faces. Trying new things, searching for what was, has been or is yet to be. Hoping, expecting, anticipating, dissappointment, relief, love, life, passion.
Self-doubt. What makes up a person? What makes her significant? What makes her count, or at least makes her feel that way? Identity in the unchanging, the rock, her foundation, her first-only-true love. Desperate for words to express deeply and wholly what is true and only one place to turn.

"I made her in such a way that she would need me. I made her a little more lonesome than she would like to be... only because I need for her to learn to depend on me...I know her heart, I know if I had not made her like this she would go her own chosen way and forget me...her Creator. Psalm 62:5-8