Home is where the ducks are

I’ve been busy living in a different dimension for a few days and there was no time to write. Well, maybe there was if I was one of those disciplined people who got up at five in the morning and cracked on before breakfast, but I am not one of those disciplined people. I am one of those people who lives in eddies and whirls, fitfully doing what needs to be done, but mostly side-stepping rules in favour of making it up as I go along.

I think a large part of my depression in recent months has been down to the fact that external events have meant that I have had to be much more grown up and responsible for things than I am capable of coping with. I say that like I had a choice. Largely I didn’t, which is where it all started to break apart. When I say it, I mean me.

The last few weeks have been a wonderful holiday from regulation adulting and I have flourished like a naughty weed poking its way through the cracks in the pavement. In the last week however, certain things have returned to tug at my time and attention and I have been required to be a bit more present in the double entry bookkeeping end of my life.

I’m writing this on Monday evening. I have spent a lot of time in the last three days travelling back and forwards to Leicester with various members of my family in tow. I have visited many people and spent last night at my work leaving do, which was extremely lovely indeed. I discovered something interesting on my travels. I discovered that I miss my Leicester people very much but I do not miss Leicester.

I was born there. I grew up there. I moved away and then came back. I met my husband and raised my kids there. It is a place that for me has always been home no matter where else I lived, but I am done. Sean Connery taught me never to say never, but for now and for who knows how long, I am done. As I drove into the marina this evening I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders and a feeling of rightness and home descending. This sooty little marina near a confluence of A roads, hemmed in by a world of nodding cranes and roaring water is not for everyone, but it is for me and despite everything else that’s going on, it’s enough.