…found it.

I won’t say I spoke too soon, yesterday. It’s just that we hadn’t gone to the right spot yet.

There’s a place in this world where I find peace deep within my marrow. A place that I know and trust beyond conscious thought. A place where decades’ worth of pain is put on pause, so that I have a chance to remember that I exist outside of it.

I’ve been so eager to find this feeling this week, that in its absence so far, I’d started to feel like I’d deluded myself in thinking it existed. Surely after so many years away, I’d lost my marbles in hoping. Maybe it had just been a pipe dream, meant only as a guiding light to help me survive all the turmoil. I’ve read retellings of The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy had only imagined or invented the magical land over the rainbow; maybe this was such a case.

Nope, my Oz is really there. Turns out I’d just overgeneralized the location. An hour in that specific place held more restorative function than years of talk therapy has (though don’t get me wrong, the talk therapy is crucial too!). It helped me remember that restoration is not only possible, but the end goal of trauma survivorhood (survivorship?). This place, it brought me back to myself.

Trauma blurs perception of all places into a sepia-toned haze of presumed pain. Homecoming, true homecoming, blooms in technicolor.

And there really is no place like home.