As I watched my hometown disappear in my rearview mirror this weekend, I felt both happy to go home to my husband and sad to be leaving my family and town again. (I made a day trip to visit my people.) Even though I love where we live now and, in some ways, I like being away from everything familiar, I always feel as though I am leaving behind a piece of myself in the place where I grew up. It will always be my home.
I've concluded that when a person grows up in one place all her life -- 28 years in my case -- it becomes such a part of that person that, in ways, it defines who she becomes. That place is more than just a chapter in my life; it was my entire life from birth until a few months ago.
I always wanted to live somewhere else. To travel. To experience new places for more than just a few vacation days. Now that I am doing that, even though it's still within the state, I feel both happy and sad about it. Part of me still wants to move further away and live somewhere completely different for a while. Another part of me wants to run back home to everything familiar and be closer to my crazy family again. Even Hub says, "I know how you feel. I love your family more than you know and I want to be near them... and that place."
*collective sigh*
However, life is never perfect. We always want something we don't have. The grass is always greener... But, despite its imperfections, I truly love our new home and the new town and all the new experiences we have yet to live. This is a good place to have a family and still decently close to the most important people in our lives -- somewhere between his hometown and mine.
Not to mention, it's in my blood and his to be on the go constantly (we can hardly hold still) so making weekend trips is, I've decided, perfectly healthy for us. It's what we like to do. Even when we have a chance to stay home for the weekend, we rarely choose to do so. Having family less than two hours away gives us an excuse to hit the road without spending too much money on gas and hotels.
We have the best of both worlds, the way I see it.
Yeah, cause I might have to kick your butt if you went much farther. However, for shopping purposes, you chose a good place for me to go and drop off Reece with you, even though Fayetteville would have gotten an even better vote from me. ;)
ReplyDeleteXoxo,
Seester
I definitely get this feeling. All of my life, I wanted to speed away from my hometown and all of its familiarity. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to live, but I was convinced that the grass was greener on the other side. It wasn't until I moved out to the midwest that I started to truly appreciate all of the little things that had never seemed that amazing before. And it also made me appreciate my family more.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly is nice to create a new chapter in your life and decide what that means to you (whether it be moving halfway across the country or moving down the street), but there is something to be said about the pieces you leave behind in the places that you live and love in.
You definitely do have the best of both worlds! I wouldn't change where I am for anything because I firmly believe that we are where we are supposed to be, but I would love to live a two hours drive from my family. Far enough away so I had my own life, but close enough to pop home on weekends :)
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