New Mexico has been in my dreams lately. Three times in the past week to be exact. In each of the dreams the sun is shining and I have just found out that we are moving back there - for keeps this time. The joy that radiates out of my being upon hearing this news is incredible. I feel whole and happy. I feel like I am finally going Home.
I sometimes feel like New Mexico was all a big dream. That the people I came to love, the homeschooling community, the sun, the mountains, the sky - all of it, really - was just a figment of my imagination. That it was just a beautiful unconscious dream of what heaven will look like for me when I die.
Living away from New Mexico - Las Cruces specifically - is like living with your heart outside of your body. It feels like I am wandering around this country, taking in its beauty with awe and wonder, but always fully aware that my heart is somewhere else. I feel like there is always something missing inside of me. I didn't feel whole before I moved there and I don't feel whole since I have left. That is how I know that Las Cruces is Home to me. It is the one place I have felt complete.
Sometimes I wonder if I am glorifying New Mexico and making it something it really wasn't. I purposefully name all of the things I didn't like about it (and there were a few) to try and convince myself that moving back there isn't going to make me feel whole again. That moving back there isn't going to make me feel Home. But even when I think about all its imperfections I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Las Cruces is my happy place. It is where I belong.
I truly believe that I will someday live there again. I REALLY hope and wish and pray that it is sooner rather than later, but I also know that while waiting for the opportunity to go Home I need to make the most of the life I am living in the other places that our family has the privilege of resting for a while. I know that there is a reason for each location we are sent to. I want to collect as many stories as I can, so that when I get back to the place I cherish I can gather my friends around and we can share stories of the lives we have led while we were away from each other. I always envision bringing all of the loved ones I carry with me in my heart from the other states we have lived in and showing them my Home, so that they can understand and see for themselves what it is I have been aching for all of this time. I see myself smiling and happy. I see myself at peace.
I thought in rereading some of those blogs that my words would show me that Las Cruces wore off on me - that I couldn't wait to move - but that isn't what I found at all. 15 months after we moved to Las Cruces I was still in awe and wonder of the place I got to call Home. I wrote about how I was afraid that living in such a perfect place for me would feel like a dream the farther time had removed me from its land. Up until the moment I left to move to Oregon I was writing about how lucky we had been to be able to experience the state's beauty and majesty. I wrote about the immense privilege I felt for having been let in on the secret that there are places in this country that can capture a person's heart so much that when they leave they leave a huge a part of themselves behind and also take a huge part of that place with them.
I think it is fair to say that I loved New Mexico from the moment I arrived and I haven't stopped it loving is since.
"You can feel immense privilege of what you have without it feeling like 'Home'. Home is the holiest word I know." - Heather B. @beautythatmoves.typepad.com
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