Brutal Honesty

So, maybe I haven’t been entirely honest about why I wanted to stay in North Carolina, and why, now that I am back in Minnesota, I am wishing I could go anywhere but here. Yes, I did really, really like North Carolina, and wish I could have stayed. There are many things that I love about that place. The weather (believe it or not), the architecture, the scenery, the history. I love it all. And I would gladly go back there. But, I would likely be just as happy going anywhere else too. Anywhere but here. Even somewhere that I’ve never actually been before. Why? The honest truth?

I feel like I don’t belong here. And I don’t know that I really want to. Before I moved to North Carolina, I found myself feeling like I wasn’t where I should be. I tried to force myself to believe that it was because Steve was in North Carolina, and I was here, but there was always a part of me that had the feeling that it was something different that was making me feel that way. Maybe because I had felt like that before Steve even left.

This was probably the biggest driving factor in my decision to move to North Carolina. I used “I didn’t have a job anyway” as an excuse, but to be honest, I wasn’t searching all that hard. If something would have landed right in my lap, I probably would have taken it, but what were the chances of that happening—especially in THIS job market? Reality is, I wanted to go. I NEEDED to go. I had to see if my suspicions of what I was feeling were correct, or if it was just an unexplainable feeling I would always have.

When I packed up and moved out there, I was so excited. It is something that I had wanted for a while. I had friends out there, before I even moved. Friends that I shared a special bond with that would never be broken, friends I had all kinds of things in common with, and friendships that had become some of the best friendships I had ever had in the short 7 months before I had even moved out there.

The 4 months I lived out there were the most exciting, and happiest months of my life. There is something very liberating and stress-free about being out on your own, being able to be who you want to be, and do what you want to do. I loved every minute of it. And for the first time in a long time, I felt like I fit somewhere. I felt that feeling inside me disappear and actually stay away for a full 4 months. I had hoped that this 4 months would give me a long enough break from this feeling that maybe when I went back to Minnesota, it would stay away.

One of my favorite pictures of home...

It seems like it was almost immediately after I returned to Minnesota that the feeling returned and hasn’t left since. Everyday my eyes are opened to another reason why I wish I was somewhere else. Why I simply don’t belong here. Why I am meant to be in a location other than here. Each day, I wish more and more, that I was on my way to somewhere else. That I could take my husband and I, and our jobs, and transplant them somewhere else. To go from an environment where I was happy, had no stress, lots of friends, and felt “at home”, to an environment where I constantly feel out of place, have stressors that likely shoot my blood pressure through the ceiling, and have called my home all my life, but have no friends, is almost unbearable. And the biggest reason I want to go back to a place where I felt like I was at home.

Someday I hope (only because I know that I will never actually get to move) that I can find my place here, and that it will begin to feel like home, but right now, I don’t feel like that will ever happen. Unfortunately, I think it will always be this way. And that I will always struggle with the desire to go somewhere, to live life in a different location, to recreate who I am and who I want to be. But for now, it is back to the old way of doing, the old way of feeling, in the place I’ve always called “home” but has never felt like home.

“’Cuz I’m a rambling (wo)man, I ain’t ever gonna change. I’ve got a gypsy soul to blame and I was born for leaving…”

-Zac Brown Band