Home warming

The last time I wrote about Scotland, it was not home. Home then was the arms of my girlfriend, the understanding of friends, and T.C., and the reconciliation of Taizé. Scotland was other and scary and very, very North.

Home still is these things. When I go South, to my girlfriend, to friends, or to Taizé, I feel like I am returning home. For the first few months, I was here, returning from the South coast to Scotland, was being  flung into the cold and unfamiliar and the devastatingly lonely. My colleagues referred to my previous hometown as ‘down South’. To me it was not ‘South’. (when you grow up in Devon, anything North of London is ‘up North’). It was home. In Scotland, only my cat knew how I felt.

Returning home yesterday, from the South coast, in the sun and dry and blue sky, I realised, for the first time, I was looking forward to being –  home. To returning to a job that suits me to the ground, to my peachy students, to my cat, who for all her aloofness, does miss me, and to a quirky little town, that is now familiar and where I am known. I have connections here now. 

It would be easy to dismiss this as ‘blue sky thinking’. The sun makes everything seem better. Once upon a time, I would have dismissed this feeling as just that. The  light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of the oncoming train. But it’s not. It’s not. The challenges of difficult colleagues and family and housing-related crises remain. I know that. 

But they are not all that there is anymore. I am looking forward to a future in Scotland where I can be wholly me around others, where my girlfriend wants to join me, where I can work a job I love. Where I am *living* rather than hiding from life. I am happy in the town where I live.