Locating myself
Over time, I've come to feel that I can't claim to have "grown up" anywhere and can't currently claim to "live" somewhere either, which is difficult to reconcile with my conviction that location is an important part of a person's identity(-formation). Of course, it's not the location that matters so much as the sense of a coherent and strong community you're able to form in a healthy neighborhood. Some people are able to achieve this despite the same sort of ungroundedness (nomads, as an extreme example; more nuanced examples are diverse and occur on small, near-individual scales, and I don't want to overgeneralize), and some people (many people, I would argue, in modern "communities") are unable to achieve this even if they live somewhere their whole life (this is one of the many evils of the suburban sprawl, which is, at least in my various experiences with it in different locations, engineered to engender transit to and from the city rather than encourage social closeness; of course, it's also a well-known function of cities themselves, but community often arises in urban spaces in spite of various psychological and political factors due in part to the proximity afforded by denser residential areas/units). I think my specific situation just draws my focus towards it more whenever I decide to play shrink with myself (which is fun - I recommend everyone autopsychoanalyze when they get a chance). I suppose I just have to work on finding a community I can call myself a part of, despite everything. ~∓~