Four years ago, I took my first steps into what was supposed to be my dream home. This 4,200-square-foot house on a five-acre piece of Montana heaven with views of the Elkhorn Mountains, towering pines, and massive moss-covered boulders was the home my husband had wanted to build since he was a little boy. My self-made husband defied all odds to build this home. Watching him beam with pride as we entered for the first time was worth every penny we had spent. This was the fruit of our 21-year relationship. The blood, sweat, and tears we had both poured into our careers, and all of the support we had given each other along the way—manifested in a spectacular home in my husband’s hometown. Because we had both carved out the flexibility to live and work from anywhere we wanted to, we could move to this sliver of Big Sky country. Yet, the moment I walked in, I had this strong sense that this was not my home.
After 21 years together, we had simply fallen out of sync. When I felt lonely, he would be busy doing something else. When he felt lonely, I would be busy doing something else. It felt like finding something to do together always required sacrifice from one of us. Yet, we had come so far. We had spent two years and most of our life savings on this house. I tried to ignore my intuition and tell myself that we’d fall back in sync. Yet, the more I tried to be in sync with him, the more I felt like I was living in someone else’s life.
About a year after we moved into that house, we sat out on our deck on a picture-perfect spring night. Two fawns were playing about twenty feet from us as their mother watched over them. Birds were chirping. The sun was setting over the Elkhorn Mountains. And…I didn’t want to be there. At that moment, I knew I needed to go. I wanted my husband to find someone who genuinely wanted to live that dream with him, and I was ready to accept that the picture-perfect dream we had built was not the dream I was destined to keep living.
Since leaving my marriage three years ago, I’ve had this strong desire to “go home”, but I still don’t really know where home is.
I felt a strong desire to live alone after my divorce. I wanted my own space to think and reflect, and to have a home configured exactly the way I wanted it to be. I am glad that I found that space, but after a while, the silence became deafening.
I tried to go back to Colorado, the place I had called home for most of my adult life and a place where I had ten times as many contacts as I did in my new home in Montana. Many of my friends had moved, had children, or changed careers since I left. I found myself with the same deafening silence I had tried to escape in Montana.
I tried to go back to the town I grew up in in Michigan. Yet, I hadn’t lived there since I left high school; the town and the people in it were not as I remembered. I have also become a different person in the 27 years since I left that town, and I never really felt as if I fit in there anyhow.
Looking back on all of this, I think it was an essential part of my journey. I needed my own space to rediscover who I was. I needed to see that people change, and that I had changed too. I needed to experience true loneliness. I needed to see that all of the safety nets I thought I had were no longer there.
This is the part in my story where I imagine you are expecting me to tell you that I needed to experience all of this to move on and find my happy ending in the form of the comfort and security of a new “home”. However, after all of these experiences, I am not sure that I want that to be my happy ending.
Losing the safety net of “home” has forced me to take leaps I otherwise would not have. For me, when I’m feeling comfortable, it’s hard to push myself out of my comfort zone.
Deciding not to have children, leaving a marriage after 21 years, and choosing to live 1,300 miles away from my family means that I am at a much higher risk of:
- Spending more time alone than I want to.
- Facing hard times without a shoulder to cry on.
- Never feeling as if I’ve found the “warm hug” of home.
It also means that I:
- Can choose how and with whom I spend my time.
- Often feel as if I have “enough” time, energy, and resources.
- Can take risks and make choices without worrying about others who are dependent on me.
- Feel more motivation to travel, try new things, meet new people, and foster relationships.
- Avoid the monotony of everyday life and everyday conversations.
The last one is something I’ve especially learned to value. When home and the relationships within it become too routine, the rest of life tends to follow suit.
I’m not sure which side of this coin I want to land on going forward. Like almost all things in life, there are often no right or wrong choices; there are simply different paths to take. The grass is not always greener on the other side, and there are always trade-offs to choice.
For now, my grass looks bright green, even though I don’t know where “home” is. At least for now, I care more about the people with whom I spend time than the walls we live within.
In closing, here are some of my favorite quotes about the path I’ve chosen to take:
“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” – Matsuo Basho
“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” – Miriam Adeney
“Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.” – Unknown
“Home wasn’t built in a day.” – Jane Sherwood Ace
“Feeling sad to leave doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go.” – Unknown
“Home is where one starts from.” – T. S. Eliot
