one year is never enough

I am often asked how things are going, how it is living in a "new place" (although now that it's been two years, maybe it's not so new...)  I always try to answer in earnest, that really the last five years have been quite the adventure going from CA to NYC to SC.  I wrote the following last spring thinking I might submit it somewhere but never posted it on the blog.  Here it is now, in summary, my feelings on all the shifting the last five years have brought.

It will only be a year and then I will move back. Turning the statement over in my head, I find myself contemplating the assured tone I once had when saying those words.  Out my window, the traffic rolls by and the sky is swept with grey.  It’s actually a welcomed coolness that permeates the air considering the sweltering heat that will arrive in a month or two and stay far longer than anyone wants.  It’s nice to pause and just think once in a while, but my thoughts almost always come back to how I got here.  I mean that literally, how did I come to live in this Southern city?  I can’t help but marvel at the path that has gotten me to this point; not one, but almost five years have passed by since I left “home” for big city life, which in turn led me back to a smaller town.   

It started when I was twenty-two.  I wanted badly to get out of the “normal” way of life that I knew and was comfortable with.  In a way, I think I was a little scared of being trapped in the same place forever.  I suppose that’s why I took such a drastic leap to change everything about the way I was living.  I had just graduated from UC Santa Barbara, the coastal university in California that I attended after growing up and going to High School in Newport Beach, another southern California beach town.  I considered myself a bona fide beach girl spending summers lounging in the sand on the shore with the constant smell of salt water lingering in my sandy brown hair and a year-round sun kissed glow that I always took for granted.  I had loved the role I assumed, but at twenty-two, things changed.  I wanted to go to a city, live a bigger and faster life with the world at my fingertips.  Nothing fit that description better than New York City.  So I packed my bags and escaped to the Big Apple.

It was only supposed to be for a year.  I really didn’t intend for the getaway to be permanent.  After all, my whole family lives in California; to travel back for a visit is neither easy or inexpensive.  What I didn’t realize is that moving to a new place takes much longer than a year to adjust.  I had to find a job, a place to live, and figure my way around such a massive metropolitan city.  It was an exciting, fun, terrifying adventure and after a year there was no chance I was ready to return to California and my beach girl ways.  One year turned into three during which time I met my now husband.  It was my mother’s fear when I first announced I would be relocating across country.  “You are going to meet someone and never come back,” she would say to me almost with a matter-of-fact tone.  I would roll my eyes or try to reassure her that she was just overreacting.  I now realize two things: that I was insensitive and naïve, and that she was right.  I met an amazing man and we got married after two and a half years together.

As much as I love New York City, I began to resent parts of living there.  The cold winters seemed to stretch longer each year.  The pace of the city was grueling at times where it seemed if you stopped and yelled out in the middle of the street, there might not be anyone that would notice.  These anonymities were what I loved when I first moved there; they were what my twenty-two year old self was craving, but as a few years trickled by it seemed I was ready to search for something else.  It was never supposed to be a permanent move and maybe that thought in the back of my mind prompted me to stir up morose feelings.  Just as I began to manifest these sentiments, an opportunity came up for us to purchase a franchise and move.  This was a perfect solution to feeling the New York itch.  This was a chance out.  There was just one catch, we would be moving to South Carolina.

I don’t mean to make moving to South Carolina sound like a bad thing; it’s a beautiful place filled with delicious food, robust traditions and a leisurely pace, but I had never been there and it was all unfamiliar to me. Frankly, I never thought I would be moving to the South.  The West coast and East coast are very different animals, especially the Northeast.  I was confused that I felt apprehension over the move, hadn’t I just picked up and moved to the very foreign New York City only three years earlier?  My husband and I had spent hours upon hours dreaming up all the places in the world we could live and I always presented myself as up for the adventure.  For some reason, this felt different.  Maybe it was because of that statement I convinced myself of when I was twenty-two.  It will only be a year and then I’ll move back.  Now I was signing up for a much more permanent experience living on the east coast.

The day we left New York, I cried as we drove out of the city.  I hadn’t anticipated such fierce emotion to escape me, but tears rolled down my cheeks and I spent the first twenty minutes of the drive mourning the fact that my adventure in New York was over.  Once I had grieved, I felt a weight lifted and was ready for this next journey in life to begin.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy and freeing as I had thought and throughout the first few months of living in our new home I often felt frustrated and unsure of what my place was in this new life. 

It has now been a year and a half since moving to Columbia, South Carolina.  I will be the first to admit, not all the adjustments have been easy.  After a lot of self-reflection I realized my focus needed to shift from looking for the escape, or for what’s next, or to always be thinking it will only be a year.  When I do that, I am missing out on some of the now, on the world happening and being great and beautiful.  Now that my eyes are open and my attitude is shifting, I am coming to love and appreciate this part of the country: the low country attitude, the graciousness and kindness of people that live here, the amazing culinary offerings and the beautiful and changing scenery.

I’m not sure where we will move next or when that will be.  Sometimes I still feel unsettled, I think about my family cross-country and wish I lived closer.  I marvel that my path in life has taken me to this southern town.  Instead of waiting for the next opportunity to uproot and move again, I want to live here and embrace my life until the time comes to make the next shift, knowing that only a year is never enough.