Another day, another friend moving away.
It seems like there's some sort of mass exodus happening, with people fleeing New England like it's ground-zero for the plague.
Well, if you hate snow the way I do, I suppose it kind of is...
Anyway, one of the few moms here that I've really bonded with is moving. Her husband flew to NC, interviewed for a job and now they're packing up the kids, putting the house on the market and leaving just before Christmas.
Talk about crushing depression. My cynical side tells me this is God warning me that I should not have friends. This is God telling me to lock myself in my house and forget about making meaningful connections. Friendships take years to forge as an adult and as soon as you've connected with someone, they leave. Maybe I'm picking the wrong type of friends or maybe I'm just not where I should be in life.
I'm not a born and bred New Englander. I find the ladies that were born here, raised here and have never lived more than 10 miles from their birthplace just don't appeal to me. Their world view is too small, their stance too liberal, their cold-tolerance too high. They squeal in glee at the first snowfall while I put on a hoodie and close the blinds, willing it to stop. I'm also not a fan of the stiff, sarcastic, borderline mean sense of humor that most New Englanders have. They just aren't friendly people.
Yes, I realized I said "they". After living here for more than a decade, I still don't count myself as a New Englander. I was born and raised on the West Coast, but I don't feel like that fits me either. I'd move to the midwest in a heartbeat if I didn't have some sort of messed-up claustrophobia that makes me panic when the ocean is too far. That and it generally snows in the mid-west. Like a lot. Like maybe more than in New England. Snow = no bueno for this girl.
The American Southwest isn't my thing either. I watch too much news and I'm convinced there's just Mexican gangs running around kidnapping, raping and sometimes killing or selling like 99% of the women down there. I have female children. That's just not going to work out. I'll take endless winter over the possibility of a Mexican drug-lord selling my daughters into sex slavery, thanks.
So what does that leave? The south east coast? I have no family there, though some friends from high school live there now. Coordinating a job change, selling a house, buying a house and moving with 3 kids - 1 of which is in school now - seems like a daunting task. So far, I haven't been able to convince my husband (who is a born and bred New Englander) to do it. He'd have to take the first step in finding a new job, and thus far, it just hasn't happened. He says he's not a fan of New England, but I think he's afraid to go anywhere new. He loves to travel, but when it comes to "home" he seems to be afraid of change. Kind of funny, since I'm the opposite. I'm not big on traveling, but I seem to have the wanderlust when it comes to calling somewhere "home".
My current record for living in 1 house is 9 years. That encompasses my entire life and actually, that stretch happened as a child. We've lived in this house for 6.5 years now. The need to move is a real thing. I don't love this house and I definitely don't love this town. Thinking that it may be my longest place of residence is troubling, to say the least.
Lets hope an opportunity that's too good to pass up comes up before the 9 year mark. This can't be my longest place of residence.
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