Mountain Hamlet Life

I have lived for 12 years in my little mountain hamlet city, population 40,000. A large state university brings the town to life with talented people exuberant about various causes, tapas restaurants, and hiking clubs. Over the past five months I've worked hard to build a life here on top of the lives I've already lived here. The town exposes the layers of my life like a creek cutting away at a tiers of college, marriage, nursing school, divorce, drunk corrections officers, falling in love with Dan, returning from Sri Lanka, and now, still composting, still raw and decomposing, my current life alone. I've been waiting to gain solid footing, throwing things into the muck like joining the local social club, people who get together for dinners, hikes, indoor rock climbing, watching polo. I joined two separate hiking and camping groups. I joined the local gun club. I could wake up every day to a world rich with activities and new people. I could "get out and meet people." And I have. I went through a phase where I was meeting new people seemingly every day starting my new job at the jail, going out with different groups, and looking for a roommate.

Rather than invigorate me, constantly redefining myself and engaging in superficial get-to-know you interactions began to diminish me in a way. I dreaded people asking me what I did for a living. People would often stop and look at me when I told them I worked in a jail, as if seeing me for the first time. None of these getting-out-and-meeting-people interactions ever extended beyond carpooling to the trail head, the walking tour of downtown, or explaining to potential roommates that I keep guns in the house. I met people, and then they faded away. Nobody went out for dinner, coffee, or drinks afterwards. No numbers were exchanged. Perhaps I needed to give it more time. Every hike, kayaking lesson, and shotgun clinic brought new people. I never saw the same people twice, never attained any degree of familiarity. I never felt myself "click" with anyone like girlfriends from college or nursing school.

And then it occurred to me, what am I holding on to here? Life in my little mountain hamlet started to make less and less sense. I have my close friend and colleague nurse who has been an amazing friend to me over the years. I have learned so much from her professionally and personally. She does what she can for me, but with a husband and two kids, a teenager and a toddler, her time is limited. So I have decided to move the Houston, near my mom and stepdad. I am going West, becoming Texan. I already have the cowboy boots, two pairs in fact. I can do this because my new apartment was sold. The new owners want to occupy it and I have to be out by May. I called my new landlords and told them I would be out by November 15th and arranged to only pay half month's rent for November. I've got two moving companies coming to give me offers and moving my meager belongings. I've given my notice at work. I am starting to drive on November 5th.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the details, but things are falling into place. It's amazing the think that in one month's time I will be there, Texas, away from here. When I'm having trouble sleeping, when I wake up and can't quite face the day, I know this whole paradigm is going to shift. I will still be myself. I will still feel sad sometimes, but I will be on my way to a new job with benefits, vacation, and sick time. If I have a bad date I can go over to my mom and stepdads to commiserate. After relationship problems I won't have to read my issues away alone all the time. My mom has already found an amateur full orchestra of medical center employees for me to join, a storage unit for my stuff till I find a place, and is looking into an apartment complex with month-to-month leases in her neighborhood.