Journey Home Series: The Final Chapter
Photo by Matt Howard on Unsplash and design by Jodie Parris.
Make sure you read the other excerpts from The Journey Home Series
Seven years ago I moved back home to Western North Carolina.
When I first moved back I wanted to capture the story as to why I moved back home, and document my journey in creating a new life in the mountains. What happened that first year of being back in NC was nothing I would have ever guessed or expected.
It feels weird to be writing this final post so many years after I moved home, but looking back I don’t think I could have written this final post then like I can now.
To write this final reflection in the “Journey Home” series, I think it is important to revisit what led me to leave home in the first place.
LEAVING HOME
The journey to leaving home started way before I moved to Georgia, and really started when I moved away for graduate school.
Even though the odds were stacked against me when I made the decision to move to South Carolina for graduate school, I had faith in my choice.
I moved out of state and got my first studio apartment a week after I graduated college, and hadn’t even secured a graduate assistantship for the fall, which would be how I would pay my rent and bills.
The week I was moving both my parents sat me down individually trying to talk me out of going through with my decision to move away. It wasn’t because they didn’t believe in me, they were just scared for me. Like most parents they didn’t want to see me fail.
All I kept telling both them, and myself, was “I just know this is what I need to do.”
Often times we may refer to moments like these as fate, conviction, following your bliss or arrow, and gut feelings.
I like to believe they are the universe’s way of taking us down the path to becoming the person we are meant to be.
Little nudges to get you where you are meant to go, and the longer you resist the harder the journey gets.
I had spent most of my life wanting to “get out” of the area I grew up in.
Why I wanted to move out of the area I can’t really tell you. I think a part of me didn’t feel like I belonged. I longed to explore new places, to be a “new” version of me somewhere else, and to redefine who I was outside of the life I had lived up to that point. To push outside my comfort zone, and challenge myself with being farther away from my family. To see what was out there beyond the mountains.
Sometimes I think we romanticize the idea of starting over and redefining ourselves. In my experience whatever baggage or emptiness you are carrying will only be amplified when you are in some place new.
For a little while it will be great, but there will be a moment after the newness wears off that you are truly confronted with your inner truths, and that is when the real work has to begin.
The real work of finding the true you, which is the home within yourself. At the end of the day when you are starting over somewhere, your inner self is all you really have that is constant and safe feeling like home should be.
THE REALIZATION
When I was in my early 20’s think I was under this illusion that moving away is just what you do when you have “grown up.” That getting your degree, your first adult job, and supporting yourself was a sign that you “made it.”
When I “made it” and realized that I wasn’t instantly happy, and my life didn’t feel full or complete, I felt betrayed by everything I believed and set myself up for.
I had been gone from home for nearly four years when I hit this realization and my breaking point in Georgia.
This realization was confusing and heart breaking to me. Even though I hadn’t failed, I believed I had because there I was living what I believed was my dream, but feeling empty and incomplete all at the same time.
The only time I ever felt true happiness during the years of being away was when I would visit back home, and see my family and friends. Every time I saw the mountains in the distance I always got this feeling of sweet relief, and like I could breathe again. The longer time went on, and the more visits I had back home, the harder it was to leave.
FINDING MY TRUE HOME
When I look back at the years I spent away from home, I wouldn’t change them one bit or the choices I made to go down the roads that I did.
The years away from home changed me, and where a pivotal part of my life journey to becoming the person I am today. They helped me realize what was important in my life, the kind of life I wanted to have, and the kind of person I wanted to be.
Most of all, the years forced me to love myself and enjoy my own company in a way I don’t think I would have ever learned otherwise.
When I am reflecting on this part of my life journey, I often wonder what would have happened if I stayed.
Stayed at home instead of moving away to graduate school. Stayed in Georgia instead of moving back home when I felt I needed to.
I like to believe that I would end up here, in this life, as this current version of me.
In all honesty though I feel if I didn’t listened to those gut feelings, I would have ended up being a lesser version of the person I am today, and be far less happy then I am now.
During the time of making the choices, both leaving for graduate school and moving back home, the thought of not doing it was far more scary than staying where I was in that moment and point in life.
CONCLUSION
I feel like a lot of people struggle with both choices I made, which is why I wanted to share this story, and post my final excerpt for this series.
Often times moving back home is seen as a failure, or looked down upon. There’s this feeling of others thinking “you couldn’t make it on your own.”
I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t feel this myself when I contemplated my choice.
At the end of the day our lives and our happiness are 100% on us. I made the conscious choice that people could and would think and say what they wanted. My focus would be on rebuilding myself up again, and creating a life that felt good on the inside, and not just the illusion of a good life on the outside.
Since I have been home these last 7 years my life has bloomed and changed in ways the girl in Georgia dreamed, hoped, and cried for most evenings.
I have an amazing husband, a beautiful house with two fur babies I am obsessed with, and I get to be close to my family and friends and be an active participant in their lives.
The word and meaning of “home” is different for everyone, and who are we to say what that is for others?
For me, Home is a place of peace and comfort filled with moments of love and joy, surrounded by those you love the most while also enjoying your own company.
If you find your “home” in your childhood town good for you. If you find it a million miles away from where you grew up, awesome. I would love to know how you created that life. If you are still trying to find your “home” know that the journey is not easy, but when you finally feel at home it will be worth all the hard choices that led you there.
Looking back now, I needed to leave home so I could find myself, and most of all to find my true home.
Your friend,
