No, not an homage to the John Lennon song, but rather, the story of the last decade of my life.  After a terribly fulfilling 8 years in China, I abandoned that, and my home there, a real “home”, with community, friends, neighbors I interacted with on a daily basis.

Why did I leave?  For “love.”  Or lust. Or whatever it was.  In its intended form, it lasted less than 60 days after I returned to US terra firma.  It then dragged on for another year of agony, in one form or another, 3 states.  Geez, now I see ANOTHER pattern in my life!

Someone once told me they expected their relationships to end suddenly in the middle of the night, usually with a restraining order attached.

That’s never been me.  My relationships have all ended with a whimper, over time.  We went through the stages, as another lover of mine had put forth, the “beginning of the end,”  “the middle of the end”, and so on.  You get the point. (Tho I admit it didn’t dawn on me at the time!)

So I started over when i came back from China, then again when the relationship I came for ended, work took me to geriatric heaven (Florida) for a short period, and I started again the next year  in La Jolla.  Then yet again, with my very “final move” to New Orleans in 2001.   And that was too be it.  For moving.  For work.  For relationships.  Spend my ‘golden age’ years in South Louisiana, loving the food, the people, my new friends, the arts, the culture.

Katrina ended all that.  And I started over again, in Portland, in 2007.

And now, it seems, circumstances are such that it will happen again.

There used to be a time when I would look forward to these transitions.  Each new adventure, locale, meant all “new”, and I loved it.

I’m dreading this time. No plan, no purpose, no place.  I have maybe three options, which I would rank from “horrible” to “catastrophic.”

It’s my own doing.

I have been cursed my whole life to believe there is goodness in everybody, even though my experiences should have taught me differently.

But if you don’t believe in the goodness of the world, and have hope for the future every day, what do you have?

A dark eddy in your soul.  Sucking you deeper and deeper into the quagmire of the darker side of life, where some people choose to live and prosper…or not.

Not me, tho there are many people who would disagree with me – and not believe I feel that way.

But that’s the way I see it.