Like a Rolling Stone

Today I am hoping our blog will go interactive.

Earlier this week, my best friend, Girl Wednesday, made a brief comment about rethinking the city in which she lives. In other words, she is considering whether she should consider moving. I couldn't help but think, "Move here! Live next door to me! We'll do yoga and attend PTA and see the newest Reese Witherspoon movies and commiserate about the weather and life will be soooo wonderful!"

Now, I would plead my case to GW in earnest if it weren't for the fact that my husband and I are planning on moving ourselves. We don't yet know where we will be moving to. We are from different, distant states (we now live in a third, entirely different state), and we are considering both of those places as potential destinations. We are also considering moving to the place where we met, in yet another state. Though we are open to where the opportunities take us, there is a particular region we’d prefer to end up in. But no matter where we do end up, we will certainly be hundreds of miles away from many loved ones— close friends and close family members.

I have accepted that I am living the kind of life that does not keep me in one place. It would be really nice to have stayed in my hometown, and to have continued the same friendships through the years. Even staying in the city where I went to college would have provided a sturdy, consistent social base. Yet I have moved around a lot since high school, always to the benefit of my academic and/or professional life (or my husband’s).

I have truly enjoyed living in many different cities and states. What I find most fascinating about different parts of this country is not how different they are, but how similar. However, I am hoping that my days of bouncing about are coming to an end. I want to have a home, to put down roots. But where? I can’t be everywhere. It makes me extremely sad to think that my children won’t see all of their grandparents on a weekly basis. And that I won’t be there to see all of my nieces and nephews (literal and honorary) grow up. Major and minor events will go by, and I’ll be wishing that certain people could be there. It’s easy to enough to think, “Well, that’s just the way it is.” But lately I’ve been thinking, “Is it?” There are people out there who don’t feel the need to always be leaving, who have no strong sense of wanderlust. They may want to better themselves, but they don’t think it’s necessary to go to a distant, unknown place to do so. They don’t feel the need to leave to pursue the very best opportunities. They will be successful right where they are, thank us very much. They know others, of course, in different cities who they enjoying seeing when they can. But for the most part, the people they care about are all around them.

Personally, I couldn’t have not left home. I chose to go to the best schools I could get into, do the work that interested me, and compromise to be with the person I love. And I couldn’t have come back. To be honest, most of the people I would have stayed close with from high school also left. I know there is a group from childhood that’s still around, but I really can’t picture myself within it now. I’m glad I left. I just think it stinks that through those travels, I have met awesome people who have become great friends, and I don’t see them that much. We will always be far from immediate family, but we’ve come to accept it. We hope that some of us will eventually move closer together; as for the others, we are willing to budget a lot of time and money to maintain our relationships through the years. At least “everything is so easy now—with the internet”. But it’s not the same. And in my heart of hearts, I still imagine one day GW and I, pushing our strollers side-by-side.

So what do you think, blogosphere? Did you leave the place where you came from? Do you regret it? Is this something you struggle with? Is your significant other from far away? Has that caused problems for you? How did you or will you decide where to put down roots?