home is where your heart is

I realized in the last several days that I kept thinking of Luxembourg when I said 'home'. This is a new and disturbing thought. When I was in Bucharest, I always used the term 'home' when I spoke about Sebes.

After being in Sebes for 4 weeks this year, I realiszed I can no longer call it home. It's the feeling that I no longer belong that's bothering me. The sudden realization that life goes on without me (as if I would be dead) in the little town: people get married (my cousin), my 'niece' and 'nephew' grow older (they are actually in the 10th and 7th grade already), my grandmother and my uncles and aunts are growing older as well. I am growing older. I've been reading about the death concept in children lately and about the likely effects that the dealing with the idea of death has in children and in the future adults.

I think that the 'growing old' problem only comes to mind in connection with the idea of death. The ‘ultimate adventure’, as somebody once put it.
At some point, I was convinced that the only reason why the human being has the desire to be in a relationship with another human being is related to this fear, the fear of finitude, the fear that this, this what we have right here, right now, this is ‘as good as it gets’. The desire to feel that one can share this dread with somebody else, that somebody else will be so affected by the end of a being that he or she would eventually want to ‘finish’ themselves. It this great love? I remember my grand-grand mother that died less than 2 years after my grand-grand father simply because she missed him so much she could not bear to ‘go on’. She kept ‘talking’ to him, she kept relating to him. She wanted him back, but this was not possible so she somehow decided to stop fighting.
Julien Green once said that to love somebody is to hide the abyss for the other person.

When we sit back and try to have some perspective upon our lives, we realize that there is little to no meaning to be found, that we must always build, build, build, build bridges to relate to others to gain a sufficient amount of meaning to keep us going for a little while longer.

I have started to talk about home, centrum mundi, the home is where the people that we love are. Sebes was home for me. The problem with me saying that Luxebourg is ‘home’ is that this statement has no real basis. My ‘centrum mundi’ is not in Luxembourg, but if I’ve lost one and did not find another, where am I? If I do not have a center to gravitate towards, who am I?

My home might be where my heart is, however, my heart is nowhere, apparently. Simply suspended, nauseated? Lost, or only asleep?

The understanding that I will have to bear staying here, in Luxembourg, for yet another year (at the least) has dawned on me last night. I am forcing myself to call it ‘home’. The actual physical home is cozy and filled with dear people. Somehow, this might not be enough.

I know why I’m here, and moreover I know why I’m not in Romania. I know why I’ve lost the ‘home’, and I know that at some point in an adult’s life, this is inevitable. However, this new feeling of ‘not belonging’ is quite scary and numbing. Maybe I’ll be able to drift away in one of my ‘non-problematic’ stages and I will not feel this awake for the following year. If I’m lucky, the whole process will not be too painful.

I want to go home.