Time and Place

I don't think a lot of people understand what it means to always be in the wrong place and time.

Which I am. A lot.

I usually feel like I was born too early or way too late. Even then, I'd probably have been burned at the stake.

People laugh when I say things like that, but I am only half joking.

When I was a little girl growing up in West Bath, Maine, people called me an old soul. Adults always seem to say that about children who think too much. Maybe it was because I read constantly. Maybe it was because I asked difficult questions. Maybe it was because I was emotional about things other people seemed content to accept.

Whatever the reason, I never quite fit.

Not with the other kids.

Not with the adults.

Not with the places I found myself.

I was always looking over the next hill for something I couldn't explain.

Books probably didn't help.

Most little girls dreamed of being princesses.

I read about one who wore sneakers and would rather go play in the dirt with unicorns than sit on a throne.

Then I watched Terminator 2 and became completely fascinated by the idea that the future wasn't fixed.

Then I read The Giver.

Then Gathering Blue.

And suddenly I realized something that would follow me for the rest of my life.

The world didn't have to be the way it was.

There were other possibilities.

Other versions.

Other paths.

Most people seemed comforted by certainty.

I became obsessed with uncertainty.

I still am.

I love the idea that reality might be stranger than we think it is.

That everything we know may only be true from our limited perspective.

That there are things we don't understand yet.

Things we can't see.

Things we've forgotten.

I am probably one of the few people who can become genuinely excited by the thought of civilizations lost to time, ancient catastrophes, or the possibility that everything we think we know about human history is incomplete.

Mention the Younger Dryas and suddenly I am paying attention.

Mention the possibility that there is more to this existence than we currently understand and you've probably lost me for the next three hours.

I've always been like that.

Looking backward.

Looking upward.

Looking beyond.

Looking for something.

Maybe that's why I became so attached to the stars.

When you grow up somewhere with almost no light pollution, you see the night sky differently.

People who haven't experienced it don't always understand.

The stars aren't something above you.

They're something around you.

They're something IN you.

You lie in the woods looking through breaks in the trees and it feels less like you're looking at space and more like space is looking back.

Sometimes I think that's where it started.

The wondering.

The wishing.

The feeling that there had to be more.

Because despite everything, despite getting older, despite becoming far more cynical than my younger self would have liked,

I still believe in wishing on stars.

Not because I think giant balls of burning gas are granting magical favors.

But because some part of me still believes hope and magic matters.

I am still looking up.

And maybe that's the real problem.

Or maybe it's the answer.

I don't know.

What I do know is that after all these years, I still haven't found whatever it is I've been looking for.

I don't think I know what home feels like.

Maybe that's why I can't find it.