The grass is always greener, the trees are always redder

I wrote this in September 2012, four months later everything and nothing has changed in the best ways...



If I were to look at my life as an outsider, just as it is right now, I would assume this person made their life choices based on a magic 8 ball answer. In a year and a half I have moved three times. Strangely enough each brought me closer to home, until I was. Each move had its own motive, something I was trying to accomplish. So now I am back, exactly where I started, attempting not to find that very depressing.

What is not disheartening in any way is being surrounded by girl friends I have known for almost ten years, some more than that. It is wonderful to be around my family again; having a glass of wine with my dad on the front patio, meeting up with my little sister four streets over, and shopping with my mom when we hear of a really great sale.

The hardest feeling I have to swallow is that the adventurous gypsy in me is taking a back seat. While a year and a half may not seem like a significant amount of time, it felt like a lifetime that flew by me in a lightening bolt. I feel like I was just there. I didn't know anything and was learning all the time. I got to see leaves change and snow on my windshield and giant skyscrapers and public transportation filled with more accents than you could imagine.

While I admit to physically being back where I started, I am not the same person I was a year and a half ago. I cannot actually have taken any steps backward because what has changed in me and the ways I have been affected are irrevocable. I have seen the beautiful and the ugly, the kind and the cruel, the truth and the lies, the awe inspiring and the things you want to turn your head away from. I have made friends, lost friends, lost a lot of things actually, but gained a ton, luckily none of which will ever have to fit in my car.

With Fall approaching, I feel pangs in my heart knowing I won't see red or orange or yellow. I know it won't smell the way it did to me last year. I always thought I could smell Fall coming in this little beach utopia, and maybe I could, but now everything I can make out is salt washed and hard to decipher. Human nature is insanely ungrateful. I remember loving watching the leaves change living in Portland and the first few times it rained after our 2 1/2 month summer of sunshine, I was enamored by it. Truthfully it did smell amazing. But I also remember longing for the sun to come back. I remember five to seven months of wearing only rain boots and longing for my sandals and flats. I remember reminiscing about the days that we'd lay out in January and February...because it was around 70 degrees and we could. So I am at the crossroads of "grass is greener" syndrome. I guess we can have it all, just not all at once.