I Want to Go Home

Please respect these raw thoughts as I process my dad's death.

As a kid, I had one constant thought that has followed me to this day.

"I don't belong here. I want to go home."

I don't think of myself as an alien. It's more like time and place are wrong. A reincarnation gone awry. A mistake of circumstances.

Maybe the thought began due to a childhood trauma.

The world is foreign. Who are these weird humans? They trap nature and make it conform in lines of perfectly manicured grass. People like the smell of a lawn being mowed. I smell grass bleeding.

We trim trees and bushes to formations that please us. Water is trapped in swimming pools and forced to spout from fountains.

Our manner of transportation is bizarre. Billions of vehicles. Thousands parked in car lots, waiting. Stretches of land blacktopped. Who will buy all these bizarre things? What compelled humans to create something to destroy our home?

Why do we kill animals for food?

Why do we kill each other?

Wars, domestic violence, illness.

We are God's perfect creations? I'd like to meet that god, and tell him he seriously messed up.

The thought has comforted me through all my years.

"Whatever happens, I don't care. I'm not part of it and I don't belong here. I want to go home."

During my last breakdown, all curled up in a fetal position on the floor, a thought came to mind.

"You're nothing special. You're just a woman who lost her father."

Life seems a tad more normal, not quite so inconsequential. I miss my oddities.