we need each other

I left home when I was still little enough to believe that 'shut-up' was a bad word (and that is little!!). And was sent to another country to boarding school. It's been 15 years since that day and almost all of that time has been spent in other countries with people I call my friends, with people who are my 'family' away from home. So returning now, coming back to png with an air of permanency, is giving me a chance to get to know my real family beyond the few short weeks of holiday and the honey-moon aura of those previous stays, a time when I was the long-lost-lovely daughter, the one who gets to leave before either she or her relatives, or both, tire of each other.

Now I am back, I am sort of alone. My immediate family don't live in this city ... so I am left with my extended one. I don't live with them. I run away to their various houses every weekend and throughout the week they are constantly checking with me to make sure I am ok. That everything is ok. And sometimes I feel even more lonely because of it.

It's weird because most of my adult life, I have spent 'alone' in so many ways, tangible and intangible. I know this feeling intimately, in all its guises. It seems to have chosen me. But coming home and feeling lonely was never something I had anticipated. Because I have such a beautiful family. Who love me and want me.

And last week, just when I was tucking into a dinner-for-one, I got a text from my irreplaceable Aunty D, and she texted in half pidgin/half english:

Gutnight n God Bless! We r all hepi when u kam! We need each other. D

Just those 4 words brought me so much peace ... here I sat feeling like I was such a disappointment, like I only took and had nothing to give, and those 4 powerful words saved me from myself - We Need Each Other - because the truth is that it's not what I bring to the table that counts, it's just that I am sitting at the table at all with the other people in my life, the only people who are truly mine. I need them, yes. But more importantly to me - they need me back.