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Wandering Jew Flower 

Ever feel set adrift in the world, uprooted and walking the Earth alone like the Incredible Hulk? Yeah, me too. In fact, I feel that way now. I've wandered the Earth for two years. People I love live in places far from me, if I could I'd live in all those different places at once, to be near to them.

I haven't had my own place for many years--the house I shared with my former spouse never felt like my home, despite the fact I ran the sucker like Martha Stewart on Ritalin. I want a home of my own to share with the people I love, the way those people have opened their homes to me. I want to fill a space with me and my life, hang my pictures and organize my books in a shelf.

The trick is figuring out where my home ought to be. The same struggle I've wrestled with for two years: Do I live where I'm happy or do I live where I'm needed? This impossible decision is the reason for my homelessness. Of course, I immediately decided to move where I was needed. This was such a disastrous decision, I became so unhappy, that I moved away from there feeling twice as much a failure as before.

Now, on the verge of moving somewhere I've always loved, where I've been happiest in my life, where Superfly boyfriend happens to live (whom I indeed love), where there is opportunity and where there are wonderful friends, I am afraid to make the selfish choice. I can only hope this works like the oxygen masks on airplanes: you put the mask on yourself, first, before helping the people who need you.