EXILE

When I read that word in Aphrodite Matsakis’ “Trust after Trauma,” it hit home like targeting a bulls-eye.

That feeling I recognized already in college, during late-evening walks, looking at people’s houses and wondering “how they felt,” I now realize described exactly how I have felt.

And, no, eight-plus years of sobriety haven’t 100 percent shaken that feeling.

Unfortunately, as a secularlist, I don’t believe there’s any Land of Goshen, Promised Land or anything else beyond this life as an exile redemption.

Exile.

To the degree I can “heal,” it means carving out my own space, learning how to share it to the degree and ways in which I feel comfortable, and learning how to do that “better.”