Â§hria's Spot

I used to live in Constance Lake First Nation.

For just over 10 years I lived, worked and grew in Constance Lake First Nation. It became my home as nothing else can be a home. To have lived in such intensity and over-my-head depth is to have lived in colour.

Sault Ste. Marie is a pale canvas compared to the colour saturation of Constance Lake. While there, I saw people born, die, marry and make indelible marks upon each others' very souls through the course of their every-day lives. Everything here is further away and less important, even when I'm in the middle of it.

The things that happened to me and around me in that community would take a lifetime to explain and couldn't really be understood by an outsider. To summarize, being an insider has changed me in a way so vital and so deeply that I feel like I will be an outsider everywhere else.

Could I go back? Could I be inside again?

Not likely. I am outside of there again. Many of the people who brought me inside and made me a member of the community in as many ways as were possible while I lived there are dead or gone away. Many left behind are those who resisted my journey inside.

No, I cannot go home. Home is not really there anymore.

When I had to leave Constance Lake First Nation, I felt like I was leaving home and the door was closing behind me. After drinking the sweet water of community membership in the deepest sense, I was exiled to the desert.

Nearly five years have passed and I still feel more alone than I ever thought possible.

The friends and family I've reunited with have no idea that an imposter is living among them. They think that what they see is what they get but I wonder what they see. Do they see an aggressive, goal-oriented reporter? Do they see a self-reliant single mother? Do they see a supportive, helpful friend? Maybe that's what I look like from their point of view but, actually, I am not really here. I am waiting to go back home.

I almost made it back here. Maybe if I had found someone to love and to love me, or maybe if I had found a group of friends who really wanted me around... but I did not.

When my children are grown enough, I will go look for a new home. Until then, I will smile, nod, be what they expect of me and try to be strong enough to last through this eternity of isolation without losing my mind through the hole in my heart.

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