Five months ago I was in the fetal position on my dining room floor on the phone with a good friend in the midst of the messiest of cries.  That kind of cry when you don’t even really have enough air to get words out.

In my heart, all I felt was that I just did not want to.  I’m not a girl who is often put in situations where I have to do something I don’t want to.  I just don’t allow that to happen.  I felt that way one other time (strongly), and I quit the job the next day.   I don’t do things I’m not ultimately comfortable with.  I did not want to leave Charlotte.  I did not want to leave our house.  I was not going.  This wasn’t happening.

My throat remained tight for weeks.  I couldn’t talk about it.  I couldn’t think about it, but I also couldn’t stop thinking about it.  There was nothing about the situation that gave me any peace.  I was happy for my husband, and I was grateful for his opportunity–but I just didn’t understand why it couldn’t be a school closer to home.  Our home.  The home we’d spent the last two years finally creating.  I was being selfish, I know.  But I just couldn’t help how I felt.  Or I didn’t want to.  You decide.

When the house we are currently living in came up, I immediately shot it down.  I’d already come to terms with the idea of leaving Charlotte, because at that point my husband had already been living away from me for several months and I just wanted to be where he was.  But I wanted to be with him in the kind of house we were leaving in Charlotte.

FYI: those do not exist in Buies Creek in our price range.  Apparently we were really lucky to snag the house we were in for what we were paying.  Stupid.

Again, I was being selfish.  I wanted an updated kitchen.  I wanted floors that didn’t look like they’d been soiled.  I wanted I wanted I wanted.  

I could not open my mind.  I stressed and worried and complained.  I ultimately just allowed myself to trust my husband.  I told him if he felt it was the best thing for us, that I’d trust him.  And I did.  Not that trusting my husband is hard–what’s hard for me is allowing myself to relinquish control.  It’s incredibly hard for me to just trust that things are going to work out instead of forcing them to.  I took a lot of deep breaths.

I was excited to end our separation, which ultimately was a good thing because it eclipsed everything else I was worried about.  I allowed myself to get into a place where I just looked at all of this as one big adventure.  I was certain I’d never be as happy here as I was in Charlotte.  I’d never like the house as much as the house we were leaving.  The house we were leaving was perfect in all of the important ways.

This entire experience has rattled me.  It seems like such a simple thing: a relocation.  But it was so much more than that for me.  There was so much else going on beneath the surface that it really caused me to have to look inside my heart and work on the person I was.  It made me uncomfortable in so many ways.  It upset me.  It changed my world.  And I’m so glad it did.

We’re here.  And no one died.  The house is wonderful.  It’s cute and quaint and beautiful.  And it’s cheap.  It’s different, but it works.  And I actually really like it.  And I might gag on my words here, but I might like it (in a different way) more than the house we left.

Leaving Charlotte was sad for me.  Especially because I know we most likely won’t end up back there. I’ve learned to never say never though, so who knows.  While J and I sat down for dinner the other night, I joked about how there’s no way we’d’ve been able to see where our life was heading ten years ago when we were just starting out.  

I certainly didn’t think we’d be living in a podunk middle of nowhere town: happy.