Going home is always odd. I get back, barely unpack, sit around myself for however many days or weeks, before shoving everything back into an Ikea bag and heading back to my real life in Kent. Obviously, it is great to see my friends and family, I wouldn't miss it for the world, but being "home" is always strange.
Partly because, even now after three years, I struggle to think of this village as home.
I went to my field today for the first time since I've been back in Surrey and just stood in the sun. I took a whole bunch of photos of blossoms and trees and fields, all the while thinking about what this place meant to me. Because a lot has happened in that field. It was the first place I found when I moved into the vicarage. I was frustrated at moving, frustrated about being so isolated, frustrated with my room and with the situation at the time and just needed to get out. So we found this field. It was everything I needed Surrey to be, there was even a pair of deer quietly grazing just out of reach, I felt, for the first time, that this was somewhere I could live.
Flash forward to a couple of months later, everything had gotten worse and I had lost several people in several ways and I was stuck in my village. I felt trapped and claustrophobic and lost all at once. And when it got too much I would run away to my field. I would stand amongst the growing greenery and sob, I would cry out to God, talk to him, wrestle with him, beg him to take me away from this place and this life.
Flash forward again to the summer when things had pieced themselves together slightly better, and a photoshoot in my field led to a decision that I probably wouldn't make again if I had the choice.
Even though it has only been three years, that little field means a lot to me. It's normally one of the first places I visit when I get back, a place that I really feel belongs to me. It reminds me that I am starting to build memories here, that I am starting to belong here.
And that makes it a little bit easier to come back home.
