I do not fall into the dictionary definition of the word expatriate, yet I find myself as far from "home" as if I had crossed many miles, oceans and time zones. Everything that was comfortable, easy, taken for granted, has dissipated from my life.

At first, I struggled violently to cling to everything I thought I knew, everything I thought was "right". I embraced fiercely notions of lifestyle, decorum, priorities and ambitions that no longer have much relevance to the realities of my life. I fought to stand my ground, to protect my territory, to force my life to fit my vision of what it ought to be, banging my head against an invisible wall of desperately stubborn notions until it was bloody and bruised.

And I realized, I am not there (maybe never really was); I am HERE. In continuing to fight for things that, apparently, were never really mine to keep, I realized, the only tangible thing that would remain with me forever from my struggles would be my scars.

I have had to leave behind every notion of what I wanted or believed because these notions do not work in my day to day life any more. I am approaching middle age with my life-savings now gone, and I am losing my house, the security I had planned for my old age. My marriage is on shaky ground, and I have failed to provide the financial or emotional security I was bound and determined to give to my deserving, cherished child. The years of diligently responsible choices in the interest of posterity, deliberate sacrifices intended to turn my notions of what my life should be into tangible realities, have left me as groundless and directionless as a fallen leaf in a wind storm.

And so, I have taken up a daunting, uncertain journey. My feet still carry me, one foot tenuously placed in front of the other, along the same streets and alleys, but these paths are now as foreign to me as the desert to a bushman, the jungle to a fisherman, the deep sea to a skydiver. It is a journey of the spirit, and it has left me an expatriate of every notion I have ever held about what my life ought to be and where my next step should take me.

I have come to believe that life is a non-linear process. From that perspective, it's liberatingly true that I don't have to be stuck in my digressions. Even they are necessary in order for me to move with the tides and the spheres, to realize my "place" and actualize my purpose. When I do this "right," it is effortless, as effortless as the movement of a fallen leaf carried by the wind.