Onto The Living Part

When I moved last May, I wasn't sure what would happen once I got here. You know, would I like being a NOVA transplant? Would I adapt/fit-in/like living in this area? Would I make friends, and would I have a vested interest in staying? Eleven months later (has it been that long already???) I am able to answer that question with a resounding answer: Yes.

For as hard as it was to leave LexVegas, for as long as the days went on without my friends, for as long as the miles seemed to keep us apart, I am still glad that I moved. I am thankful everyday to know how far those miles have really taken me. I am happy here. I am the me I was screaming to become. It's a beautiful and bittersweet parodox, of losing so much in order to gain so much more.

I miss my friends every day. I miss being able to call NB-C to go to the tanning bed, to have my best friend in the same city. I miss the ease and familiarity that city had afforded me. The traditions in April and October, the "First Down Kentucky!!!" blaring from Commonwealth on game day. I miss my work people, who became so much more than just that. The smell of the Jif plant roasting peanuts, or the grandeur of the horse farms right within my distance. I miss the small town feel, the Nicholasville Road traffic, and the shortcuts through neighborhoods I had become so familiar with. I miss laughing with people who knew me for me, who cared about me, who were always kind, and who loved me. I miss the ease of I-75, that straight shot that led me to my hometown. I hate knowing that 3-hours is so much less time to spend than the 7-hours it now takes to get there. That what is there now is a little man who I fear will never know his aunt the way I'd like him to, who captured my heart more than I knew was possible, and who won't know how hard it is to not be with him as he grows up.

Yet what I've found here, allows me to take comfort in knowing that it's all still there, and that it's mine for the taking anytime I want to return.

I am happy here, because when I look out the window I see a future instead of a shackle. I can't describe what it is that makes me love being here. What gives me this vesting, what envokes me to stay. I just know that I love it here, in a very different way than I love LexVegas. I love it for what it meant to me to get here, for what it's afforded me in my career, and for the people I've come to meet along the way. I love that the open air and the blue sky often give me a glimpse of being home, like the day sneaks up on you and wraps its arms around your soul. I love it because it led me to him, and to the happiness I had almost convinced myself would never happen. A comfort in having a best friend so close, her children to love, family members even closer, and for the first time having all so close at the same time. I love it because what it means to me is that I began living my life, for me, because of me, and in spite of me. For learning who "me" is. And for growing up. As for what's left, I can't even begin to express how much I love having so much to do, all. the. time.

I left Lexington because I knew I had to let go in order for the fantastic happen. And I'm pretty sure it has happened to me. I feel this ease and this burst of satisfaction and I know that I have much to look forward to, in a place I look forward to being. It just feels nice. To really be happy. To leave all the strife behind, to deal with new challenges, new drama, new possibilities, and for good or bad, to do so by myself and without any pre-concieved notions of who I should become.

I wish I could say the irony would not befall me this time, but the vortex is whirling again. Thrusting me into a collision of both worlds this week...

I will go home to Lexington on Friday. Back to the arms of the friends I miss so deeply, surrounded by the sublime presence I so long to feel. And today, I took the first step in securing my place, here. I made an offer on a townhouse. A place to call home, a home to grow into, something that is totally my own.

Home.

A place, that took me a very long time to find.