Enough crumbs make a loaf (or at least something you can smoosh back together)

Have I ever belonged anywhere? If I stayed in California or Montana or Texas or Pennsylvania would I have eventually felt I belonged there? This is a chicken or the egg question. Has my moving and wandering created my sense of displacement or have I always been displaced?
We so obviously have no friends here. Not yet anyway and I keep telling myself it takes time. Remember how long it took in Pennsylvania to feel like a group of people wanted you around? Like you belonged with them drinking beer and playing with their children and meeting their families? It took two years at least, but damn if I don’t want to wait that long.
I’ve met some great people here, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t expect them to automatically claim you as FRIEND and you can’t be over bearing and trail them a starving animal. It’s been hard work to put myself out there, to surround myself with strangers, looking at them and wondering if in the future I’ll know something past surface streets.
It was so much easier where we were. It was easy to stay there. But you remember the good things about a place to screw your mind into thinking you made a mistake in leaving.
Making friends is all about instinct. A blood in the air sort of thing. A breadcrumb you follow into the dark. For now, I’ll trust there’s a reason one crumb came to me on our first day at work, sat next to me and asked if I was a designer too.