Neither Here Nor There

When you don't know where you belong

Sometimes I feel like I don't really fit in anywhere.

Sometimes I feel like I fit in everywhere.

Sometimes I can feel both ways at the same time. A sense that I belong, but am also not quite accepted.

It might just be me being a bit of a weirdo. It might also be that when you move places, cities, countries, you set yourself on the path of an outsider.

It's normal now, even expected for people to fly halfway across the world to live somewhere else and set up a new life. Meet someone special, maybe also from somewhere else. Blend a life together. Generational layers scattered all over the show. No Nana living on the same street. No support. It's all okay when you’re young living the life of the cast of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Your support crew is the people you find some common ground with.

What changes is when offspring come along. The next batch. You start looking at the bigger picture. Nana's not up the road. She might be ten thousand miles away. Sunday dinners with someone else's family. Not yours. Who is there to help when you need some family support? What value do I have with no one for me to help out too? Family is a two way street.

I'm glad I've been a vagabond. A traveller. A free spirit. But it does come with a cost. That feeling of fitting in with everyone you meet - always something in common - yet also not having the deep bond of family and friendship that can only be earned by staying in one place for a long time.

I've had a sense of Back to the Future recently with some areas of my life. Like I'm driving the Delorean back from 2015 to 1985. Some things feel like they are stuck in time after hitting 88 miles per mile.

Spending time in the place I grew up in recently induced that feeling. So many things stuck in time, with not much change. Sure, a new restaurant here and there, but otherwise it's like going back to 1994. Even the music playing on the radio sounds the same.

I don't know anyone there now. I'm a stranger. I don't know if I'd recognise people I went to primary school with even. Many of my high school friends also scattered on the winds to the four corners of earth. I sometimes wonder if they share similar sentiments that I do.

When you live life going on lots of adventures, the shire looks different on return.

Frodo longed to return to Hobbiton, but when he finally got back he didn't fit in anymore. He was changed by what he had experienced.

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend.”

“The old life does not fit the person you have become. Therefore, there needs to be some adjustments made.”

Frodo Baggins

Sometimes I wish I had never left the shire. I could have played sport and games. Shared familiarity with people I grew up with. Maybe become a farmer like my Dad or a journalist like my mum.

But that wasn't to be my life. This is. Whatever journey I'm on now? The next episode. For some reason I ended up in the desert of Western Australia. Before that Scandinanvia and the UK. Who knows where next?

I have a bag tag on my backpack that has a quote from the Lord of the Rings:

“Not all those who wander are lost.”

It’s always a comforting reminder for me that restlessness and a yearning to learn and explore are not necessarily negative things in life.

The feeling of being neither here nor there is just a feeling and feelings come and go. To go ‘there and back again’ is a privilege. The life that we have lived up to this point is in the story bank. I've enjoyed mine and still have more to deposit. How about you?