Settling down

I re-read an email I sent to Silversewer a while back and it came to me that I had understood myself so well all of a sudden in that email, so (apologies SS) I am going to share part of that here:

"Now that we have been back down here 10 years, it is hard to know where we belong. We feel like we have settled here now, but we have moved three times since we came back, and have been in this house 6 years. The girls were both born at Forth Park maternity hospital in Kirkcaldy, and are proud to be Scottish-born, if not Scottish-bred! I used to think I would go back to Cupar in a heartbeat, but we have got so involved here now that I think it would be a wrench to leave all this now - and I think that is what I missed about Cupar when we left - we had a "place" there in the community, and now that we have found our places here, we are actually quite happy here too. I do miss living in a town, though - we spend far too much time travelling here, whereas there we could walk just about anywhere we needed to go. The girls have to go to school on the bus, and we use the cars (now we have to have two) virtually every day. Having said that, I wouldn't fancy living in any of the towns round here, and I am grateful in some ways that living here stops the girls going out and hanging around in the streets - not that I would let them anyway, but they don't expect to be able to go out to hang around here - there's nowhere to hang!! I am happy for their friends to come here, and at least I know that they are all safe that way. We also have my dad, my uncle and my sister within a 20 mile radius now, so we see them more often. I do thank God for the internet - living out here without it would be challenging - and I hate shopping with a passion!! I can't understand people who say they have been to Cambridge or Peterborough to the shops for recreation - if I can't get it in the little town 8 miles away, I send for it on the internet, we make it or we do without!!"

It seems a bit strange to me that in that moment of writing to someone I didn't know, I could all of a sudden have that clarity, and realise that it is not where I live that it is important, but it is the feeling that I belong there that matters, and makes us happy there. It has taken me a while to reach this conclusion, but actually I think that I have had this feeling of contentment in the area for a while now, and I don't long to be elsewhere any more!!