A little bit of envy

I'm at a point in my life where I don't have any roots and I don't have a real home. Most of my friends are married (or seriously involved with someone) and have a household or at least A Plan. They have a pretty good idea where they're headed. I'm not even sure where the hell I'm really from. And I have no Plan. If I don't have a job by the end of next month, I will likely have to move into one of my sisters' homes back in the Midwest, which kinda feels like emotional suicide at this point. It would never be my home. It would just be another transit point in a rootless existence.

My family moved around a great deal, so most of my brothers and sisters were born in different states, and they dropped off to build their own families along the way, some in the Midwest, some on the East Coast. My parents both came from Depression-era broken homes, and there was no steady base to turn to. When I was little, there were no visits to hometowns for us. No trips to Grandma and Grandpa's place for me. (My maternal grandmother was institutionalized in the 1920's and my grandfather got married to my mom's evil stepmother. My paternal grandfather died of pneumonia in 1929, and my grandmother got married to my father's evil stepfather. Not a lot of warm fuzzy memories there.) Sure, there's a scattering of relatives on my father's side up in Minnesota, and some across the West Coast for my mom's family, but no place that has a solid base and sense of family history for us.

A friend of mine just spent a wonderful weekend in a town rich with his family history. I'm sure he'll be blogging about it. It grabbed at my heart. It just seems so neat to be so connected to your own history and to be able to touch it and see all the people who know your family's history and value. My valued history only goes down one generation, to my parents, and, more specifically, to my mother. And she's gone. And so is my father. Other than their headstones, there just isn't anything tangible for me to go see and witness and feel connected to.

Is it stupid to feel envy over something like that? It's not a bad sort of envy, just a wistful sort. I wish I had that kind of connection to something like that, a thread that's woven from a clear past into your present.

I'm afraid my threads are all frayed.