I have been thinking a lot about things that change.
The way relationships ebb and flow, and sometimes simply just die out completely.
Twenty years ago I was pretty confident in my friendships. I was sixteen years old and my best friends were few, but they had known me at my most intimate of places and I knew that, say, 20 years down the line- they would be the ones who knew my children and stood by my side.
They aren’t.
While I am barely in touch with one of them, the other two are not in my life at all. {Today is actually the birthday of one of them, so I’ll send a resounding “happy birthday, J” out into the world.}
Ten years ago I was incredibly comfortable in my friendships. I lived in a place that wasn’t my favorite- but I truly loved my friends. We had dinner parties and consistent movie adventures. We shopped together, read together, played together and prayed together. I knew that was exactly how I always wanted it to be.
Of course, it wasn’t.
Here I am, at 36 years of age. Different location. Different friends. Different occupation. While I am still friends {sort of} with some of the girls i was friends with then, nothing looks the same. It isn’t worse, but it definitely isn’t better either. There are days when I miss that so much, and i think wow, I would trade one hundred todays for just one of those yesterdays… but isn’t that how it usually is? We cling to the past and look in that rear view mirror.
A little over five years ago we wanted nothing more than to move home. Then we lived in Michigan and home was, of course, Idaho. Our driving force for coming home was for our kids. Beyond that though, there were loads of amazing benefits. My husbands family, for one. My sister and her kids, for another. A gaggle of friends we had known since high school and college, that we loved and missed dearly.
Five years ago, we couldn’t believe we’d made it back. Made it home. And that feeling of home and perfection lasted for quite some time. Five years later though, we have no relationship with my husbands family, and are far better off for that. My sister and I, sadly, barely speak. The friends we knew have either moved away or we simply have little to nothing in common any longer, and new friends stand where they once stood. Things change. People change.
I’ve changed.
I no longer put up with abuses in the name of family, and sacrifice our boundaries to appease others. That’s changed, and i am glad it has. We don’t regret coming home, but today looks nothing like I thought it would those five or ten years ago. While we didn’t come back to “go backwards”, it’s starting to feel like we did.
Idaho, for us, has grown to be like our seasonal home. We aren’t alone in that notion either. A lot of celebrities have seasonal homes here, and why wouldn’t they? It’s a great seasonal state! Now, if someone would just notify our income level that it’s time to go out in search of our everyday home, I’d appreciate it.
rainydayinmay.com 