displaced wanderer

I am a displaced wanderer, though I feel as though I rarely travel.  This colorful map may suggest otherwise but it only represents a handful of lengthy journeys across a vast nation.  I have lived in a total of three states and two countries and have not done a lot of vacationing outside of these.  I frequently wish that all places were in the same place because I don't like leaving or being left, though sometimes going someplace new is important and even imperative.

I was talking with a friend the other day about places and about where he would rather live, and although there were positive things about various different choices he said that it was the people in those places that would draw him to the place, not place itself.  I have often cared more for the people than the places as well, which makes it impossible to really go back to someplace I have left because though the place may itself be the same, the people have changed or gone away and it can never truly be as it was.  We cannot really recapture the past, we can only arrange our present to influence our future.

When I lived in Washington I remember liking that it snowed, even though I was living on the desert side of the state.  I used to be attached to the river that ran behind my Grandma's house and to the horses that my aunt owned.  I was attached to that place because of the people and memories there.  Now I'm not so sure that is the place of my heart.  My grandparents are both gone and the house and property they lived on is being prepared for sale.  I don't know if my aunt still owns horses.  The allure of the place that I felt when I was 8 was missing.  The magic is gone.

In California I loved the weather.  The heat somehow never felt as hot as Texas, mainly because we were closer to the ocean so the breeze would come in and cool everything down in the afternoon and evening.  I always wished it would rain more there, but it never got too hot or too cold, really, so I was happy with that.  I miss the people there, but my extended family has been slowly spreading out as cousins have grown up and moved on their own following their own adventures, and now that college is finished it seems only natural for my friends and classmates to slowly spread their wings and find their own adventures.  California was losing its allure and it seemed time to move on.

Now Texas.  Texas summers are too hot for their own good, but we get real weather here.  I'm not sure I like being somewhere that houses can collapse from weather, but I've always loved storms and rain - real weather!  Texas feels more green than Southern California.  It's less of a desert.  The city feels smaller than Los Angeles, though its big enough to still truly be city.  I don't know a lot of people here, still, though I'm making friends at church and work.  I'm optimistic about this place and the people here, but there's part of me that feels that Texas isn't it, yet.  Maybe nowhere will ever be "it."  Maybe I'll be a forever wanderer.

I'm happy to be in a state more central in the United States now.  It makes visiting my scattered friends a lot easier, makes the road trips less lengthy than driving from California, though visiting California friends is now more challenging not being there.  I feel like I'm at a point in life of re-evaluation of my friendships - you know, which ones are true friendships, who should I work hard to hold on to.  I don't think where they live matters because location can always change, theirs or mine, and there are so many future unknowns, but I think it is important to have friends and to consciously work at developing those friendships and building a community of people to build each other up.  That's something that I really want but that I am not the best at.  Moving away it's easiest to also move on, to say goodbye to old friends, build new ones, and let that be that.  But I'm not always okay with that.  There are some people I don't want to say goodbye to.