What does it mean to belong somewhere? How does it feel to belong somewhere? Is feeling comfortable in a place an essence of the place, your comfort with it, the people and places there, a state of your self, or all of the above? I'm not sure I know. I'm not sure I'd understand it if it hit me. At what point do you stop looking for where you belong and belong where you are?
For a long time I belonged in Chicago. It was my city and I was it's person. I knew where things were, I knew how to get where I was going, I felt a part of it and felt it was a part of me. Granted I moved a lot in my time there, which leaves me with the feeling that maybe I didn't belong as much as I thought I did I didn't actually move away. I was still there. That's one of the attractions of living in such a big place, moving 20 blocks away is like living in a whole new place. So maybe that belonging can be localized and I really didn't belong in any one of those 5 places I lived. Whatever belonging I did have somehow passed and I was in a place that didn't fit me, that I didn't fit and I left it.
Then I moved to Evansville. And while I never really felt I belonged there it was a place where I knew the people, knew the places, knew the things and I felt a certain amount of comfort living there. Comfort is a terrible word for it, maybe security, security of the closeness of family, of familiarity. I don't belong there either. I knew I didn't belong there when I left it in the first place, but it was worth the chance to see if it would work now. People change, and surely, the places they belong change too.
And now I ride through the streets of this town, this potential new town, and am left wondering if this is the place I belong. I'm understandably hesitant to make any determinations of belonging having only been here a few times, but I just don't know. But I don't know if I would know.
I can't help but wonder what belonging means and how I can find it.