I've had issues with where "home" is recently. As I'm sure all of you know, I moved to Maryland from Ohio on February 19th, 2011. That was a little over 7 months ago, and I'm just now feeling okay with my choices. Not that I didn't want to move, I did. I wanted to start a new life, move in with my boyfriend, and experience things I'd never have the chance to in Ohio. I went from living in a tiny rural area to a large suburb in the Baltimore metro area. I'm 2 hours for DC. I could take a train up to NYC. There's public transportation, people! To a small town girl, this is all so new. Before I had to drive 2 hours just to get to a MALL.
And then, all of a sudden, I had everything at my finger tips. Cheap, good produce? Half a block down the road, if that. A large mall with shops like Louis Vuitton and Burberry? 200 feet or so from my apartment. It was all so NEW and it was exciting. I felt like one of those people on tv, who could walk anywhere and everywhere and everything was amazing.
During the day, anyway. At night it was a different story. I'd sit up and look out my large windows at the night below me, lights twinkling until dawn. It was pretty, I loved cities at night, not that I'd ever lived in one before. But those few late night visits to Columbus always awed me with how shiny everything was. I wanted to be a person who could live in that kind of environment. And suddenly I was. I was living in that environment I'd imagined my whole life.
And it wasn't fun.
I hated it. I missed my mom, I missed her stinky dog. I missed my sisters, and my small town, and silence. That's what never occurred to me before moving, that it's never just freaking QUIET here. There's always traffic, sirens, neighbors, something going on. It wasn't hoot owls and crickets keeping me up, it was drunken college kids during finals week.
And the apartment... on more than a couple occasions I told BF that it felt like a hotel. You know that feeling you get when you wake up that first morning in a hotel room and you kind of forget you're in one, but you get that sudden sense of things not being yours? Strange bed, strange pillow, strange room, strange smell. It had that no-smell of hotel rooms. The smell of cold air and little else. It didn't help things any. I'd come from a home where my mom burned candles all the time, the place was warm, and decorated, and personalized, and it was home.
The lyrics I posted in the title and the first line of this entry were basically my mantra. I played this song over and over on my 6 hour drive to Maryland (when I wasn't listening to my favorite audio book because the dude that reads it has a super deep voice and I found that soothing). I said these lyrics more than once to myself as I tried to get used to things. Change was good. Change brought new things, made you better, lifted you to a level you'd never been before.
But it was still so hard, you guys. I was so alone, especially during those 3 months where I couldn't get a job. I spent all day in the apartment, cleaning it top to bottom like a mad-woman. After that, I had nothing else to do. I'd watch tv, and putz about on the computer, but I had nothing to do but sit and think of how I was in an alien environment. I couldn't call mom, because that made me too sad, I'd end up crying and I didn't want to upset her.
I don't know how many nights I cried myself to sleep. I know it bothered boyfriend, I know he felt helpless because he couldn't do anything but hold me. He wouldn't say anything, he'd just hold me until I fell asleep.
Recently though, it's been better. We've had a routine, I have a job, we've started personalizing the place. BF admitted he doesn't care about stuff like that. If it were up to him, there'd be no decorating, no pictures, no cute things. Because he doesn't care about it. He said that's all up to me.
So we bought a bowl to put apples in. It's fall colors and has fruit on it, which matches the cute apple/candle set my mom got me for Easter to put on the kitchen table. We bought a vase so I can put flowers in it. We've been using the oven more, which always makes me feel at home.
It's getting better. I feel like this could be home now. I no longer get mixed up when I say "I'm going home" because I have to think about where that means. Home can be both places now. It's still hard. I still miss my family something ferocious, and if I ever got the chance to move closer, I would. In a heart beat. But my relationship, this new life, is too important to me to just pick up and go back to my mom with my tail between my legs. I've done that before, and the feeling isn't one I want to experience again.
Home is here. Home is Ohio. Home is where you're comfortable, you can nest, and you feel safe.
Now if it weren't for the fact that we're thinking about moving again (same area, different apartment), I'd be perfect.
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