I have taken a bit of a writing hiatus.

A friend from home came to join me for a bit, so writing went to the back burner. This is why I don’t know if I could ever be a “writer”. I love doing it, but it is difficult, solitary work, and when I instead have the opportunity to spend time with someone, especially doing fun things, I jump at it, and writing falls by the wayside. Am I being lazy? Do I have a goal, but am I failing to make the commitment to do the difficult work to get to the finish line?

Maybe. But my friend’s visit got me thinking about other, more pressing things.

Why did I choose Saint Lucia? Yes, I hate the cold and I’m done with snow. I want somewhere safe and warm, tropical and English-speaking. Somewhere that could be affordable for me to live, possibly even for me to buy my way into residency.

But there are a lot of places that satisfy that list. Why am I here, in Saint Lucia?

I have wanted to come here for years. And if I am truly honest with myself, I romanticized, idealized, this country. Yes, I came here because it checked the boxes – safe, potentially affordable, hot, English-speaking. But maybe I designed the boxes so that it would fit.

Did you notice that I started the second paragraph with, “A friend from home…”? Why am I still calling it home?

I am trying to decide if the place I left still feels like home. I think the answer is no. But if right now I was injured or fell sick and had to convalesce somewhere, I would return to the area to do that. I would not return because of my knowledge of the local health system or anything else, but because of the people I know there. The friends and loved ones I left behind.

But I left behind other things. A profession that never fulfilled me. Family that never understood me. Partners that turned out to be incompatible, for reasons I do and do not understand.

And while I left those people behind, they are still with me. Their presence lurks in my heart full of holes and my darkened, grief-stricken soul. Those holes and the darkness, are, I think, why home no longer feels like home. All the pain was caused there. If home is where the heart is, then maybe home can’t be where the heart was shattered.

If that is right, then I will not feel like I have found “home” by checking boxes about weather and affordability and a lack of language barriers. Somewhere will only start to feel like home when the heart is no longer so tattered and when there is at least a silver lining finally peeping around the contours of my dark soul. Home will only emerge when I can make, or I can start trusting, connections again.

No. Home will only emerge when I can start trusting connections again. I have no trouble making them.

I have not ruled out living in Saint Lucia. I know the area I would live, and I know what I would like to do. I have even made some connections there. But I have said, “I’m not ready yet. I can’t do it alone, or at least, with the few people I’ve met. I’m too scared.” Maybe the real problem is I’m still just too lonely, and yet still too heartbroken and scared not to be. I don’t trust the connections. I don’t trust me.

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So there it is – I don’t know how to trust me. But I do think that is a problem that will not be resolved by spending 28 days or so in any foreign country just because it checks some lifestyle boxes.

Maybe, subconsciously, I realized all of this before my friend even left (I miss you already!), and that is why, and how, the next location had already been chosen. It checks some of the boxes – great weather, safe, English-speaking. But it has something Saint Lucia does not. A friend. A friend, already professing their excitement about seeing me, and opening their door to me.

Is that a better start for determining “where will home be?”

I don’t know. It is possible that all these questions could be much more difficult to answer because there is a possibility that “maximum chill” may have been lost because there may have been Carib weed, and it may all be gone.

Hahaha. Did you follow that?