When my boyfriend, David, and I decided late in July that we would accept offers from theater director Larraine Brown to act in the 15 Minute Festival in Belfast, we knew we’d be getting out of New York and its insufferable August heat. We also knew we’d be starting an adventure, taking a risk, trying something new.

For David, acting is a profession. I, on the other hand, dropped out of auditioning about 21/2 years ago, finding, No. 1, that people actually wanted to pay me for writing, and No. 2, that maybe I’d be happiest if I could write my own show, which I’ve proceeded to do.

I was also coming home.

I grew up in Maine. Born in Bar Harbor Hospital in August 1974, I spent my first six years in Gouldsboro, where my parents grew most of what we ate and did odd jobs to support themselves as artists. When I was 6, my parents moved our family to Surry, which is where I lived until I was 18, when I went off to Paris for a year, then to Brown University and finally, having no idea of what else to do, I moved myself, my cat and all my stuff to New York City.

I’ve lived there ever since – not because I chose it to be my home, necessarily. Instead, inertia just kept me there. Now the stuff and the cat and I have the addition of David and we all live together on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

They say you can’t go home again, and, at first this summer, this seemed to be true. The morning we arrived, after having driven all night long to get from a play David was closing in New York City, we were sensitive and vulnerable, exhausted and hopeful.

As he ran off to rehearsal, I hobbled my stiff legs down to Dudley’s Diner near the water. I was ignored for a time as I sat with my New York Times at the counter, then gruffly approached and treated with the indifference Mainers reserve for people passing through.

I felt hurt, and in my exhausted sensitivity, tears sprung to my eyes. I wanted to explain: “Wait, I was born here – I’m not really a tourist.” But instead, my two eggs scrambled with cheddar cheese and a sliced tomato came and I decided to eat (they were some of the best eggs I’ve ever had) and drink my coffee.

That first week, David and I tried to figure out when exactly the restaurant Chase’s Daily was open (and why at 10:31 a.m. we were out of luck for breakfast, even if we pleaded – wasn’t this a smaller, friendlier town?), where to get the newspaper, where to get an iced coffee for the best price and where to shop for food. We were often met with a coolness reserved for tourists. Or so we felt. Heck, he was a tourist. But I wasn’t.

It was somewhere in the middle of the second week that we felt a change. Maybe it was that we had suddenly become familiar faces, or that the faces we saw around town had become familiar to us, at least, and so our demeanor changed. Maybe we just began to relax and settle into living our lives for the time being in Belfast.

I became aware of the change within myself one night when I ran from the empty apartment on Market Street to the city park, where I met David for a game of tennis. It was nighttime – around 8:30 or so – and the park was dark save for the lights that lit up the tennis courts like Fenway. There, hitting the ball back and forth, the faint pock-pock-pock sound of the yellow fur hitting the strings of our rackets, I looked up and saw the trees and overhead the moon, crepuscular and wrapped in a fine mist, and I thought, “Maybe I’ve found home or heaven or something in between.” I realized that I no longer felt like a trespasser or that I didn’t belong.

We had adjusted to Chase’s schedule and couldn’t wait for Tuesday morning, when we would arrive with our newspapers and play scripts, hunker down in a booth and wait for blueberry buttermilk pancakes or eggs scrambled with homegrown heirloom tomatoes, fontina and basil. I always wanted to go back for lunch, but David felt this too exorbitant at first (by the end of our trip he had relaxed) and we both vowed that if Chase’s were next to our apartment in NYC, we’d never cook again.

To be involved in a festival in its first year is a learning process. When we arrived, we didn’t know what we’d come into. We felt awkward and New Yorky – even I had been brainwashed into a New York attitude of “How is this small town going to pull this off?” What we learned was that, with the inspiration of Larraine and all those involved, we’d see a festival come to life with little money, a short amount of time, mostly local talent, and big dreams.

When opening night came, the curtain went up and word came back to the women’s dressing room that the show was sold out. I almost fainted. I hadn’t acted in front of any audience in a while, and the 500-seat theater terrified me. But then, for two nights I did it – remembered my lines, felt connected to my character, Terry, who is a youthful, beatific and disconnected shop clerk in the wake of Sept. 11 – and I loved it. I was hooked all over again to acting. I was hooked on Belfast.

At the end of August, as the night air cooled considerably, we packed our car, had one final feed at “lb” – a lobster shack on the wharf – and said goodbye to Belfast. The sun set purple and gold behind us. Since last September, David and I have talked about leaving New York City. We’ve asked each other – as New Yorkers do – where we would feel safer, why we should go, what we’d be leaving behind.

But we never left New York.

After Belfast, we now know we have a place to go. For me, sitting at my desk in Manhattan, the anniversary of Sept. 11 fast approaching, my mind fills with the hope that you can go home again. And all I can say is thank you, Belfast. You gave us a safe place.

Caitlin Shetterly’s book “Fault Lines: Stories of Divorce” was published by the Putnam Berkley Group in 2001.