{"id":30650,"date":"2019-10-27T20:02:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T01:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30650"},"modified":"2019-10-27T20:02:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T01:02:00","slug":"this-path-leads-to-somewhere-i-think-i-can-finally-say-im-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30650","title":{"rendered":"\u2018This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I\u2019m home\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how to get home. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever been there.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not from this place. Not really. Yes, I was born here. On this planet, in this state, not far from where I sit. But I look around and know with certainty these are not my people. I don\u2019t really understand them and they don\u2019t understand me. We might as well be from different planets.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been looking for home since I was a small child. We didn\u2019t stay any place for very long. From the beginning, it was a painful blur.<\/p>\n

Birmingham, Washington, Atlanta, Knoxville, Meridian, Anniston, Oak Grove, Pensacola, Jasper.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was a long line of new places, new people, new situations. I had a mother, then I didn\u2019t. I had stability, then I didn\u2019t. I craved love and attention and approval, but being perfect was the only way I knew to pursue them. And I wasn\u2019t perfect.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve longed for something all my life. I didn\u2019t know what to call it. I\u2019ve longed to find my home.<\/p>\n

Every now and then, I still think of a song that a woman wrote 10 years ago which she said was inspired by her feelings about me. I’ve had it on my mind today, because it’s about the idea of home.<\/p>\n

She was half of a duo which had been professionally singing in her area for years. She wrote and recorded this song as a simple demo. I have no idea whether she ever fully developed it and performed it, because the group broke up shortly thereafter when she moved to England for graduate school.<\/p>\n

I had known her years before this, but we hadn’t pursued a relationship at the time. We were too far away from one another. I’m not sure why else. But in 2009, she got back in touch with me to see whether I was still interested \u2014 and we started talking all the time.<\/p>\n

But the timing was terrible. I was in the middle of grieving about another relationship which had just ended. My heart was still somewhere else, so I wasn’t willing to let anything serious develop with her.<\/p>\n

When she wrote to tell me about the song she had written, she told me why I had inspired the song. She said she hadn’t made the lyrics obvious enough for anyone else to know what they were about, but she said they were about me.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid, I miss you,\u201d<\/em> she wrote that day. \u201cSince we’ve been speaking again this past half year, you’re always on my mind. I dream about you, think about you and fantasize about you \u2014 or about \u2018us,\u2019 I guess. I’m not saying that that is good or bad. I’m only telling you what goes on in my private world.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And then she sent the demo of the song.<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/01-I_m-Home.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

The chorus is what I’ve kept coming back to in the 10 years since — and I’ve come to understand it more deeply as the years go by.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sick of running
\nI\u2019m sick of losing my way
\nThis path leads to somewhere
\nI think I can finally say
\nI\u2019m home, I\u2019m home, I\u2019m home<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nothing came of that relationship. The reasons don’t matter. I haven’t spoken with her for close to 10 years. We’ve gone completely different directions.<\/p>\n

But I understand now why she made the connection in the lyrics between home and me, even though nothing about me had been literal home to her. I understand why the lyrics were about longing to see me — and then me meeting her at a station. But mostly, I understand why she equated all of that with finally being home — after years of running and losing her way.<\/p>\n

Home isn’t a place. Home is someone who truly loves you.<\/em><\/p>\n

And that’s why I’m still longing for the home I’ve always needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know how to get home. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever been there. I\u2019m not from this place. Not really. Yes, I was born here. On this planet, in this state, not far from where I sit. But I look around and know with certainty these are not my people. I don\u2019t really understand Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[274,433,629,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-30650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-family","8":"tag-home","9":"tag-longing","10":"tag-love","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7Ym","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30650"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30663,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30650\/revisions\/30663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}