Hiraeth

I've been thinking a lot about this word this week.  I feel I've finally found a word that encompasses how I live.  The ache that follows me no matter how many countries I visit, places I live, jobs I do, people I meet.  The world is littered with my memories and pieces of my heart that I've lost or given.  I have no regrets for how I live my life.  I've found a peace this past year, an acceptance, that this is who I am and there's nothing wrong with it.  But the ache still shivers through me often when I think of all the people I miss and moments that didn't last long enough.  Moments I wasn't ready to let go of just yet.
Hiraeth.  A homesickness.  I used to dream of a singular home that would hold all my comfort and love.  Inside it would be people who needed me as I needed them.  There was certainty there.  An absolute belief that I belonged and was loved.  It would be this place of safety that I could escape to when the world was all too much (which it so often is).
I never found that place.  I don't know where I got the idea that it existed.  Perhaps from the protective cocoon that my parents created when I was young.  Or perhaps it was a created nostalgia of my own mind about my childhood.  I just remember feeling safe.  And so sure that my future was going to be guaranteed for greatness.
Now I find that my home is not a place.  It is people as well as within myself. This does not, however, make things in any way easier.  People are transient, fickle, or in search of their own destinies and lives.  You can't fault them for it.  They have their own purpose.  They should want and go after what is theirs.  But it is always hard when your direction is not the same. Sometimes they veer off where you can't follow.  Or you pursue something that is not meant for them.

My home is my mother and father.  They are my past and roots.  They are the voices in my head that tell me to be kind and push harder.  But they are across the country and it's hard when I've had a bad day and all I want is to sit next to them and remember that these two people have known me my entire life and have loved me for every single minute of it.  You can't say that about many people, can you?  Christmases are not same now.  Birthdays are often a telephone call and a card in the mail.  I cannot recapture those themed parties and personally decorated cakes of my youth.  Moments that cannot be recreated even with the greatest of effort.  Hiraeth.

My home is my brother and his family.  I call my nephew and niece on the phone.  Tonight, my nephew asks about the Star Wars story I promised him.  He asks when I will come and visit.  My heart hurts because I don't have an answer for him and I can't make a promise I can't keep.  I remember holding him as a baby, the sound of his voice the first time he said my name.  Soon he will be too old and too cool to ask his Aunt Stacy to come visit.  I ache because I have missed so much.  So many moments.  And I know I will miss more.  Hiraeth.

My home is my dear friend Kate in London.  She is both grounded and a dreamer.  She reminds me that I have every right to fight and believe that I can create whatever I want and that what I have to say is worth hearing.  She brings out the silly in me.  I am not silly nearly enough on my own. And I wish, so many times, at the end of a rotten day, that she could meet me at a bar and have a gin and fizzy lemonade while we plot our world domination.  Our times in grad school are precious memories.  Moments that have sealed us as forever friends despite oceans between us.  We joke and fantasize about being roommates as we collect our menagerie of odd pets and become two old biddies together.  Hiraeth.

My home is with D, who unintentionally inspires how I look at the world even though we have broken a few of the strings that tethered us together.  He is a quiet voice of reason and has provided such stability in my nomadic ways.  Though absent, I still find myself spinning events of my life into imaginary letters, missing his good sense and quick wit that always brought me joy.  I sometimes ache for the moments I haven't shared with him.  Or the memories that might have been made.  Hiraeth.

I have so many homes in so many cities.  Yet I find myself always missing someone. Or something.
Hiraeth is living my best life while wishing I could be in all these places at once as well.
And I AM living my best life.  No, I am not kind enough to myself.  My home within me is still dusty with cobwebs and ghosts.  No, I am not where I dream to be. But I am moving forward while being present, and THAT is progress.  I am IN progress.  I am taking the time to savor my solitude.  Even though I don't share my moments with my homes.

I walked home from a mini performance tonight while the sun was setting over the small South Dakotan village. A half moon appeared above me as I meandered over cracks in the pavement. Main Street has but one stop light and all the stores are privately owned.  There are no Starbucks or Walgreens.  The ice cream shop takes cash only and the Shell station is more of a bakery than a mini-mart.  Colonial houses line the street with beautifully landscaped grass, trees, and shrubbery.  There's a gorgeous yellow mansion with columns, balcony, porch with swing, sun windows, and french doors...I think to myself, in another life, that would have been my house.  Though the yellow would have to go.
I turn down my street and hear only birds in the trees and the beginning songs of cicadas.  There are no sirens or people shouting.  Just the susurrus of the wind through trees.  I think, how lucky I am; to see this and yet know NYC.  To come back to my house here where the doors remained unlocked because people here do not worry about crime, and yet still know and understand the hustle of a great City.  How lucky that I know my way around Edinburgh, London, Seattle....that I've seen Australia, France, Italy, Monaco, Canada, Mexico, Ireland, Iceland, all around the US....and yet I have also been able to walk the streets of a tiny town like this one.

Being an actor, being in this business....it's lonely.  I don't mind solitude.  I actually need quite a bit of time to be by myself, to quiet the outside voices and opinions and recognize my own.  But there are moments...like these...that I wish my home, my people, were with me to experience a dusk like this.

Hiraeth.