For several years after I moved to Minneapolis, I’d be out with friends, native Minnesotans who seemed to know everybody. Their high school track coach, their mom’s high school track coach, their uncle’s neighbor’s hair stylist. I found it profoundly annoying, if I’m being honest. There does seem to be something inherently braggy in Minnesotans (and maybe in all of us) that gets a particular pleasure from knowing everyone.

Something happened, though, about five years into my Minneapolis stint. I started knowing people, too. I’d run into a college professor at the mall, where they were clearly not supposed to be because professors should always be professing. Or, eventually I’d go to a coffee shop enough that the barista wanted to remember my name. When I started running into exes while with my current loves, I knew I’d officially made it into awkward Minnesotan know-them-all territory.

Here, I pretty much don’t know anyone. I haven’t claimed a coffee shop yet, (too many new ones to try!), and I don’t have any exes. So yesterday, when I was walking down the “main drag” of my neighborhood, I paid little attention to the person yelling my name from across the street. I figured it was a different “Lauren.” No one knows me here, not even my neighbors really know me, because many of us are in our 20’s and antisocial if it’s not via a computer. But the yelling persisted, and I finally (reluctantly, antisocially) slowed down.

She was a writing classmate, a person from school, but also someone I’d had coffee with outside of school, so I think she counts as a friend. She doesn’t live in my neighborhood, so seeing her was a surprise. But she does live in Seattle, and so I think this counts as my first someone-I-know sighting. I was really happy about this. It felt like I passed some kind of milestone, like maybe now “I made it”, even for a minute.

I’ve thought about home the last few months, and started making peace with the fact that I have several, in different places and with different people. I think when you’re young, the idea society gives you is you’re supposed to have one home, one place where you settle and put down roots and stay forever. At least, that’s what I see happening with most of my peers. But maybe they have more homes too, homes I don’t know about, homes that are more intimate than their literal ones.

I feel at home with people, in different places, in different seasons. I used to worry that I’d never find my “true home.” But I’m getting cozy with the idea that I might not have one. “Not all who wander are lost” comes to mind here. Seeing my friend on the street, having her so insistently shouting my name as if to say, “You can’t hide from me girl!” made me feel like I just might have home here, too.

I’ve been quiet (ish) regarding the conversations surrounding women and street harassment that have been circulating the Internet in the last few months. Mostly, it’s because I agree that yelling at or trying to chat up women who are just going about their business is not ok, and that it’s an epidemic with roots of sexism and privilege that are as deep as the snow in Boston. And I don’t have much else to add on this point, so I’ve tried to be quiet and to listen to others who need the space to tell us their stories.

I get my share of catcalls when I’m out in the world. They are uncomfortable and unwanted. Once, some guy yelled from his car that I was the most “beautiful blind chick” he’s ever seen. Which is sort of funny, in a really sad way, and also not ok to yell at someone. I’ve definitely been the recipient of the all too common, “Smile baby. You’re so much prettier when you smile.” Lots of other comments centered around me being blind. I learned early in my bus traveling career not to engage with men who asked me questions or told me lengthy stories about a “friend” of theirs who was blind, and could they have my number for that friend? Seriously?

And you know what? I’ll come clean here: when I was in college and never took the bus, and hardly walked anywhere alone outside of campus, I had some of the same feelings other people have expressed about this issue. Feelings like: “Oh, they’re just trying to be nice”, or, “Come on, you should be flattered, someone’s telling you you’re beautiful, isn’t that GOOD?” They were feelings born from naivete. Sadly, sometimes you can’t learn something, truly, unless you experience it yourself, or see it experienced by someone who is close to you.

I never feel completely at ease walking by myself, even in familiar neighborhoods. And it’s not because I’m afraid of getting lost. No, it’s because I’m afraid some dude will try to talk to me and I won’t be able to escape. Does this keep me from living my life? No, not usually, but I absolutely, 100 percent understand that for some who have it worse than I, it would.

It became clear to me the other day while I was having coffee and working, the extent to which I have been conditioned to be on my guard against physical and verbal attention. A man approached my table, (though I didn’t see him, of course), and said, “Excuse me, are you by yourself?” Before my logical brain could sift through a bunch of perfectly acceptable reasons he might be asking me this, I felt my defenses skyrocket. In these moments, I can physically feel my body preparing to deflect confrontation. My face slithers into itself, closing tight like a fist. My spine straightens, steeling my muscles. My shoulders tense. I look straight ahead, not at the person, pretend I don’t hear or care or understand. A beat passed. He said, “Um, it’s just that, we have a group of seven, and if you’re by yourself, we were wondering if we could switch tables with you.” That was it. He didn’t actually say, “Because if you’re by yourself, I thought I might rape you”, or, (the more realistic one), “Because you’re a beautiful young lady.” No, he just wanted my table, and I fell all over myself to move me and my laptop and the coffee and the dog to give it to him, because I KNOW that I had been rude and actually, contrary to what you might think, I don’t want to be rude. But this is how I’ve built a shell around myself over the years, because the majority of the time they want something else, something more than a table, and even if that something is just a smile and a “thank you” or some other response I’m supposed to give based on being passive and being a woman, I shouldn’t have to adhere to that expectation just to appease someone else’s ego.

I hate that I had that reaction to the table switching guy. I felt badly about it. But as Ani Difranco says, “In this city, self-preservation is a fulltime occupation.” And I’m not getting paid to walk by myself and remain vulnerable to the things that I can’t see, but sometimes, I feel like I should be making millions.

I met a friend for tea the other day and as we looked over the overwhelming tea list, I said, “This kinda reminds me of a place I really like in Pike’s Place Market. It’s called Market Spice. They have EVERYTHING.” It took us both a few confused sentences to realize I was talking about Seattle and hadn’t said so.

I am in between. Most of the time, my feet are here. They still walk here, and know where they’re going. My head is in Seattle, or planning Seattle; where I will live, how I will get to Whidbey Island, who I will meet, where I will eat, which parks Kiva will like, how the pattern of my footsteps will change. The rest of me is between, my emotions spiraling from almost manic excitement to a loss that makes it hard for me to breathe. Knowing what I need to do, what I will do, what I ultimately want to do, and knowing to do it will mean I leave a life that is brimming with warmth. Who knew there was so much of it in Minnesota?

I started telling strangers I was going to move to Seattle even before I started telling friends. I wanted to know how the words would feel. I was always met with envy foremost, then, “How we you leave Minnesota?” I can’t complain; it’s great to live in a place where people love to live. I felt somewhat dismissive two months ago. “Oh, well,” I said, “I’ll come visit. It’ll be fine. I’ll come in the summer!” (Har de har, the jokes just keep on coming.) Now, I feel torn in two directions; my ambition in one pocket, my mouth watering for change; my self-preservation in the other pocket, begging me, like a child, not to leave.

Part of preservation lies in my need for control. I know what I get when I stay here, year after year the same. There’s a comfort to knowing what to expect. But, there’s an excitement which lies only in being afraid and doing it anyway that I almost suspect I need in order to feel alive.

Being between means I can love the place where my feet are as fiercely as I can. It means I can anticipate the place where my head is as hopefully as I can. It means I use the stuff in the middle to make the most of the time I’ve got left and think about the time when I come back. Because I will come back, probably in the summer.

I’ve written answers to questions I assume people have wanted to ask me in the past, or questions that people have actually asked me. Today I want to ask you questions, dear reader. No big preamble this time, I just give you ten things I’ve always wanted to ask a sighted person.

1. How can you tell from someone’s back who that person is? Are things like hair and shoulders and walking feet that distinctly personal?
2. Do you ever consciously know what street you’re on when you’re walking? Or do you just go by what looks familiar? (Third option: do I always just ask for directions from people who have to go run ahead to look at the street sign? Or look it up on their phone?)
3. You can tell me all you want about what the sun looks like when it’s setting, or how bright the moon is, but how do those things make you FEEL?
4. How do you get anything done in a day when there seemS to be just so much stuff to read?
5. How do you communicate complex, intricate messages with someone all the way across the room?
6. When you see a person with a disability, do you see other things?
7. What is the single best thing you’ve ever looked at in your life? Or the top five things? Oh, hell, what’s one really good thing you’ve looked at in the past few days? Why was it so amazing?
8. When there are so many people in the world who don’t or won’t or can’t, why did you decide to talk to me?
9. Be honest, do you REALLY know the difference between fire engine red and cadmium?
10. If I could see for just one day, or even just one hour, what should I look at first?