Float On Alright
In January of 2013 I moved 274 miles east with with eagerness and hope and an entire metro of possibilities.
I had 5 boxes packed in my bedroom corner for 4 months and didn’t say goodbye to a single one of my best friends from high school. I had spent the last summer depressed and in bed, watching Finding Nemo everyday of the week. It took 3 full car loads to move me to Oklahoma- “delayed gratification is not a concept I am familiar, nor comfortable, with.” I apologized to my 6 new roommates. I don’t even remember hugging my parents goodbye; The excitement of freedom was overwhelming.
I use the term freedom loosely, as I spent the next year working (serving, volunteering) 60+ hours a week for a church and working retail another 12- 25 hours to earn (barely) enough to eat and again, get to work. It was a hard year, spent working until 2 and up at 7, and hiding in closets. I didn’t complain though, I was excited.
In 2014, I left my internship and lived like a real young adult with two friends and furniture way too heavy to move. They were vegans and we lived entirely too close to a Target. I learned to SCUBA dive, I went to the Bahamas on my own dime and nobody questioned if I didn’t come home for 3 nights or if I got drunk on a Monday night. I watched a lot of movies and went to the zoo often, it wasn’t until then that I learned how truly lonely total freedom can be and that the cost was far more than I cared to pay.
In 2015, life led me to one too many dead ends and the next logical move for me was home. I was recently engaged, trying to fit circles into square holes and desperately trying to make my decisions the right ones. Life was weird for a little bit, as I had moved back in with my parents and was waiting to be married; I was excited. I found myself, again, working for a church. I felt comfortable and “at peace” hoping the choices I had made were led by the grace of god. I believed this was the life for me, however unfulfilled I may have felt.
I wrote a post roughly a year ago about the friends I made in 2015. How I hard I had prayed for god to surround me with loving and supportive people and the pictures attached to that post gave me a glimmer of hope for the religious slivers left inside me; How fully my prayers were answered and what delightful people I spent my year in Amarillo with.
So those who consider themselves religious can understand my disappointment when less than a year later, I was met with more dead ends. I cried in a hotel lobby with a friend trying to make sense of the loss and desperation I was feeling. I never found any sense in 2016. Basically just a whole year, from start to banging finish, full of fucking dead ends.
How does life keep moving forward even though you don’t see anywhere to go from here?
3 months into 2017 and I again, have moved. With less excitement and hardly any planning, I left Oklahoma (hopefully for the last time) and instead of trekking towards the comfort of West Texas, I moved as close to paradise as I could get.
When I met my SO, we were friends. He was planning on moving north and I was hoping to move home. Within a short while, I fell stupidly, recklessly, irrevocably in love and 3 weeks later I told him, “I’d follow you anywhere.”
My friends just shook their heads, understandably.
The only way I can try to justify flawlessly loving someone so soon after having a relationship fail so publicly is: I didn’t know that this is how it was supposed to feel. I can swear to you all day that when I saw couples as affectionate and seemingly as happy as I am now, I would roll my eyes and scoff, “There’s no need to act like that.” I did not believe in a love so inviting that you literally couldn’t get enough of each other.
It happens, sometimes, if you’re lucky.
A week ago, my sweet love and I packed our few belongings and our 2 pups with the promise of missed opportunities and the hope of more promising ones.
We didn’t say goodbye to anyone.
We moved 602 miles south and have spent the last 6 days in the sunshine and drinking coffee and taking a lot of afternoon breaks. I keep forgetting to call my mom back and despite the beautifully long, sunny days, theres barely enough time in the day to untangle my frizzy, wind-matted hair.
We weren’t really excited but god are we happy to be here.
