Reclaim my spirit from each and every place I have ever left it

while i put this “down on paper”

1. new milford
2. bergenfield (a)
3. closter

4. fair lawn (a)
5. toms river
6. wyckoff (a)

7. portland, me
8. wyckoff (b)
9. jersey city
10. cresskill
11. bergenfield (b)
12. tompkins, ny
13. msu

14. belleville
15. saddle river
16. clifton/mntclr pt.1

17. fair lawn (b)
18. little falls
19. midland park
20. clifton/mntclr pt.2

21. caldwell
22. edgewater
23. home

~these are all the places i’ve moved. the early ones are the split homes of relatives. from 7 on, i was on my own. obviously, i have had a problem with staying still. more often than not, i moved from a frying pan into a fire because of my impulsive nature and/or rash decisions. where we are now isn’t going to last long either.
some of these places are good places. good memories. i wish i could go back in time. others not so good.
i think of this goal as a physical one. i’ve not grown roots anywhere and i think that has had a bad effect on me. i have left bits of me all over.

i spent a great amount of my life running.
i have referred to so many places (off-handedly) as “home” and yet so few ever were—so few safe—and off i’d go again, anxious, sometimes desperate to find the sanctuary i really lost years before.

i have been driven by self-preservation, sometimes genuine opportunity, and most often by my impulsive, cyclothymic nature. the last is a very recent discovery and one that is forcing me to change my behavior (this is good).

i am not sure how i will “recapture.” i am thinking photos tho, some of these places are gone. what bothers me most is that sometimes people stole pieces of my spirit—people i will never see again. i wish i could find them and rip it right out of them, taking it back and leave them to bleed to death, if need be.
but i guess this is the best opportunity i’ve got to go hunting for the ghosts of myself.

i’ve always been about the tabula rasa: but you never completely erase your memory do you? and lately little fragments, some good, mostly bad, have been seeping in, like flashbacks and disrupting me something terrible. so i’m adopting this goal thinking maybe if i stop ignoring them, and take ownership, they will stop damaging me.