Home is where the [insert answer here, please] is.

I'm back, or somewhat back. I have been reading but not writing, observing but doing very little participating these days. I didn't think I could possibly be any more inside my own head than I was before my pregnancy, but somehow this introversion and introspection continues. The most horrible thing about it is how inarticulate I have become in expressing what happens to me during these times of soul searching. Once I could fill page after page with my musings on life, sadness, happiness or self-doubt. Now I am constantly lost for words, or even lost for the desire to find them.

Not to say that I have been unhappy. I have had more moments of contentment in the past five months than I think I have ever experienced before. Suddenly there is a wave of acceptance that the life I have is the life I want, that I am where I need to be. With one important factor changed - the location. Yes, that tyrant of emotion Homesickness has reared her ugly head again. And lately she possesses a fury and determination that doesn't allow me to write her off as easily as I have in other battles. There are several elements to my homesickness, some stronger than others, some more familiar than others. Some are real, some imagined. All are conspiring to disrupt my little bubble of contentedness - this happy little world where I love my husband more than I thought I ever would, where I rub my bump reassuringly to send my little one off to sleep after hours of kicking and flip-flopping, where I am respected at home and at work, where I have time and space to do the things I find important, where I am a wife and a mother-to-be building the family I have always wanted.

The first factor is the physical environment. I miss the seasons - all four of them. I miss winters full of snow and ice and hot cocoa; crisp, cold and sunny mornings; long underwear and LL Bean Boots. I miss springtime that is not drowned in rain and hampered by regularly cold and dark days - real spring where you can feel the weather changing and see the green starting to find its way back into the Earth. I miss summer. Hot summer days spent at the beach or on a blanket in the park. Days when the heat is so strong you think you can't bear it, but then the thunderstorms come in a torrent. They are over in minutes, but have stayed long enough to break the heat and leave you with a beautiful summer evening to spend alone in a hammock or on the patio of your favourite bar with friends. I miss Fall - not Autumn, Fall - and all of the beauty that the changing of the leaves brings. I miss playing in leave piles, apple picking and hay rides.

I also miss the beauty and convenience of the places I called home before Belfast. In Maine I was minutes from the ocean, from the river, from the little reservoir with an island. In Washington, DC I was surrounded by the beauty and bustle of the nation's capital. Living in Dupont Circle meant that art, food, culture and an exquisite variety of people were just outside my front door. I could spend all day strolling through (free) museums at the National Mall, or read in the unfathomable quiet of the Library of Congress. I felt constantly in the middle of something - of protests and movements, of history as it happened, of a city that was truly alive and bursting with energy and potential.

But these environmental factors are minimal concerns in the grander picture. Belfast may be a bit dreary sometimes, but it has its own beauties and charms. I have grown to love it, to feel pride in its ability to change and grow and regenerate. I will continue to adjust to the rainy summers and the snow-less winters without too much fuss. No, Homesickness' grandest weapon is the power of the relationships she represents.

It might sound contradictory to some of my previous posts, saying I miss the relationships in my life at home. Many of them have been riddled with strife and misunderstanding. But it was my strife and misunderstanding! There is something so extraordinary about being surrounded by people who know you - who have always known you. When someone has seen you at your worst and your best, knows every dirty detail and every little secret, it provides a sense of freedom that doesn't exist in any other relationship. My husband shares this with me, and for that I am truly grateful. But in Belfast he is a solitary member of this exclusive club. I want those people I can call at 1am back, for better or for worse. In times like these, the most unlikely of things starts to happen. The very things I have tried to get away from become the things I long for the most. How strange that I would miss things like people laughing at loud bodily functions, or family members willing to fight and shout at each other in a direct and confrontational way? As a teenager I longed for trips to Europe, cultured holidays. Now I would give anything to spend the weekend at a cheesy campground with all of my family, crude jokes and all, gathered round the campfire til the wee hours of the morning.

I have made difficult decisions in my life, but they are decisions that I think reflect the person I have always felt comfortable being - in spite of this, sometimes I just want the opportunity to slip back into my previous life. Like those jeans with the holes in the knee that you just can't get rid of because they are too comfortable, and because they have lasted with you through so much. I have worked hard to kid myself into thinking that living away from my family isn't a choice, that it is what I need to do to make the best life for me and my husband and our new family. But lately I have been thinking a lot about how deliberate that choice has been and whether or not it was the right one. I hate that my mother and father are watching my bump grow through a series of digital photographs, that my child will be almost 9 months old before she meets my sister and brother - or anyone in my family outside my parents. I worry about sharing holidays, about what will happen if my parents fall ill and can no longer care for themselves, about my children feeling closer to my husbands' friends and family than they will to mine. I feel like I am missing out on so much - my brother growing up, the chance to run to my mother's house when I need someone to look after me for a couple of hours, being able to stop by and see my father unannounced.

How does one ever know if the decisions they make in their lives were for the best? How do you know where you belong? How do I get through feeling like this when the homesickness sets in? How do I figure out once and for all where home is?