When home isn't quite home.

I just had what was for me a first and rather odd experience.

I'm currently sitting on a train heading to Inverness from Aberdeen, heading home. To my current home, anyway.
I moved to the UK from Canada just over a month ago, and settled in Drumnadrochit in the Highlands at the beginning of April, so I haven't been here long, and home is still settling.

By contrast, I grew up in Vancouver, Canada and will probably always consider that 'home' on a certain level. It's certainly almost a given I'll be going back once my UK visa expires.

Having said all that I've just had a very interesting set of feelings (or limbo of feelings if I'm being honest).  I was sitting on the train and watching the Highlands go by, listening to music, when Simon and Garfunkel's Homeward Bound came on. 

When I was still in Vancouver I tended to get a sense of settling in and being home. When it started there was a small corner of my brain that was kind of curious as to what it was going to do this time, get homesick or switch the sense of 'home'.  I was absolutely fascinated by what happened instead.

The song lyrics are about feeling homesick/nostalgic whole being on the road, and I was all prepared for that. Instead I felt a little detached and absolutely no fellow feeling.

Me being me, I started mentally poking that and discovered that I wasn't really feeling any particular sense of home for my new place either, which I did in the Netherlands after a few months.  I haven't really been here long enough to get that connection yet so it's to be expected,  and now I'm unpacking what I was feeling, which is (for me) an interesting mix of feeling like you're sitting on the edge of a precipice and really aren't at all worried about the fall, and almost unconcerned about the fact that I don't feel like I have 'home' right now.

I'm not sure where that's coming from, though I have theories.  I know that as long as I have a home base, I'm fairly good with dealing with whatever life decides to pitch at me. And I know I get excited about learning new places, the rhythms and the weather patterns.  I could also be sitting with a quite assumption that the sense of 'home' will settle in a month or so.  I don't know if any of those are right, or if it's something else, but I'll probably keep poking it.  And any way I turn it I still think it's interesting.  I'm just kinda fascinated by the feeling of sitting in the middle, and I don't think I've verbalized it very well, but there we are.

Be well all.