To Leave Your Whole Life Behind

So, it’s official. I’ve actually relocated for a positive reason. I'm not moving because of a bad breakup, awful roommate, loss of a job or any other catastrophic event. I've actually packed my bags and moved to Athens to start a new life and everything about it is positive. I’m uprooting my little family from all I’ve ever known to strike out in a new town, a much smaller town, with different opportunities professionally, to be closer to my sister and her kids and to be closer to the boyfriend as we move toward making our own little family.

I’m almost entirely happy about this decision. There are so many positives here — so many reasons to be joyful and happy and hopeful. But I keep having these lingering little flutters, pangs of sentimental ache… Like a spider web when you walk through it, you know it’s there, but you can’t swipe it away. 

I've left Atlanta. It’s not like I’m relocating to the other side of the planet. But I’ve left my city... My Atlanta. I was talking with my best friend about this recently and I said, “I feel like I’m breaking up with my past in order to upgrade to my future.”

And it’s true. In order to move into this new space — not just physically, but the emotional space of wanting to share my life with someone — I’ve got to purge my luggage. Sure, I’ll carry some things with me into my future… Some quirks and strange memories… Some baggage won’t go away no matter how much I try to flick its stickiness off my fingers. But all of the things I used to cling to for normalcy, they will have to all change.

It keeps hitting me in subtle little waves, lapping up on my memories and then just as quickly, receding away. For example, I was listening to Album 88 in the car, the radio station for Georgia State. It's my go-to morning commute station because the music is mellow and interesting and it's all stuff I've never heard and might never hear again. I'm attached to it. But... There’s no Album 88 outside of the metro Atlanta area. It just hit me. You hit Bethlehem going up 316 and all my programmed radio buttons turn to static.

There’s no La Fonda and chicken tacos and upstairs patios and strong frozen drinks.

There’s no Brickstore and squeezing into that tiny booth upstairs and way in the back.

There’s no Piedmont Park and no more every-weekend-in-the-spring festivals filling its sidewalks.

There’s no more late nights drinking wine with my best friend in Ansley Park and scooting off to work in the morning, bleary eyed.

All of my touchstones are changing... It almost makes me want to run through my old life, supermarket-sweep style and load all my memories into the cart with one fell swoop of my arm... 

But there’s also a lot that I feel like I’m sloughing off for the better. Not to get all new-agey on you, but I’m going to quote something that my best friend and I discovered while she was reading my astrology chart to me:

"When you work a long day, its good to come home and rest, and when you feel the need for help, its good to feel comfortable enough to ask for it. But for you, there can be a resistance to these very natural things. Somewhere in your past, either earlier in this life or in a previous one, you’ve worked hard pursuing your goals and doing what needed to be done.You’ve come into this life with an attitude that knows how to survive by being practical and by adapting to the harsh realities of life and making a living. (Some of you have even allowed an almost pathological sense of caution or reserve to develop in response to having to keep a stiff upper lip.) Now it’s time to soften, relax, and heal from being in a competitive and sometimes pressured environment."

All of the stuff I’ve dealt with over the last decade has been preparing me for this exact moment in time. That Anais Nin quote about the bud and the blooming and what not — it hurts to bloom, sometimes… At least when it first breaks. It’s okay to hurt a little bit, to be uncomfortable.

Right now, I get to say good-bye to the me that came with everything I come from… It’s a little sad. But now I get to be the me I’ve always wanted to be, the me I’m supposed to be.