lost connections

I think the hardest part of all this is feeling cut off from all the people I spent the last few years getting to know. Countless randoms strangers I grew to feel familiar and comfortable with, to at least some degree. That's been a huge challenge. It's taken me years just to get to this basic level. I felt known and respected. To a degree. It was always a work in progress. I was making progress. Long slow and more important to me than doing anything else progress.

I had the idea some of this might transfer with me to a new place, with all new people to potentially get along well with, I thought some of it had to do with social skills, and a familiarity with socializing itself. That must play a role here, but I think it's just a long slow process that takes time for me. Time for people to feel more familiar and comfortable with me, just as much as the other way round.

I think it's an arduous uphill battle, and I've tumbled all the way back to the bottom, each time I go live somewhere else. In some places I've lived, I had nothing to lose. In others, I had a lot. This time, I had more than ever.

I'm probably going back, but I don't know when. I don't know that anything else won't go wrong in the meantime. I don't know for sure how this will all work out. I don't know what of my fragile connections will remain, if and when I finally get back home.

I just want to go home, but I am a person without one. I have safe and comfortable shelter, and that's saved my life, but I was kinda aiming higher than that for a while there. That seemed like incredibly important work for me to be doing to save my own life. When I talk about having a life, maybe it's about all these connections with strangers. This was a massive setback and I keep getting older here.