the more things change...

Last night David and I were getting into bed for the night and talking about what a hellish, emotional, but incredibly exciting week we've had thus far, and David summed up the entire ordeal in one vivid little quip that describes things far better than I ever could.

"Just when we're starting to panic and get really worried all of this good stuff just, like, barfs all over our lives and destroys the precious little stability we've managed to secure for ourselves."

People. Good stuff has barfed all over my life.

I've been meaning to blog a lot in the last week, but I just haven't been able to get my act together.

David and I celebrated our two year anniversary last week, just before Thanksgiving. Then there was the holiday itself. Oh, and David and I both got jobs, by the way. He's working a temporary project-based job for the state government, and I've got a seasonal part-time gig at the Ronald McDonald Charity House doing some general admin work and taking inventory of food donations. (Thanks to Meredith and Neil respectively for the connections that led to our employment!) Our commute is just a tiny bit ungodly, but it's nice to be working again. We start apartment hunting this weekend.

And really, I've been having an incredibly difficult time with these transitions. Thanksgiving marked the first time since moving out here that I really became homesick. Like, almost inconsolably homesick. I burst into tears in front of my oven early Thanksgiving morning--superficially because my pie crust would not roll out properly, and mostly because it was one of the first major holidays I'd spent away from my family and it was in that moment, sobbing in front of my oven when the sun had barely risen, tears making tracks through the sugar and flour on my face that it really hit me that I live here now. That this isn't a vacation, or playing house, or anything. That this is where I live now, and where I will be living for the rest of my life. And a lot of the people I love are not here with me.

See, I knew these things. David and I spoke about these things extensively when we made the decision to come out here. But I realize now that perhaps he better understood the depth of what that would mean for me than I did. Because it was a very different thing to know something intellectually and to feel it erupt inside you all at once because of a stupid pie crust.

And although I pulled it together with David's help ("Honey, you are not allowed to bake anymore if it's going to make you this upset!"***) and had a lovely holiday with his family, I've had a lot of trouble finding my balance again after that. Things have been coming at us--or, barfing on us--so fast over the last handful of days. I just wasn't prepared for the onslaught of EVENTS.

And the thing is, it's all really good stuff. Jobs! Apartment! Independence!

It's just so much at once, and I was not prepared.

But the thing that I have realized as I've struggled through this week, getting up at 5:00 am and sitting alone in a coffee shop for hours to kill time before work, getting home late and so exhausted that the dishes never get done and the bed never gets made and all I want to do is curl up and sleep--the thing I've learned, or rather, come to appreciate on an even deeper level, is that this really is where I want to be.

It's hard. And I'm overwhelmed. And I miss my family and friends so very, very much.

But there are good things waiting for me here. And (ok, about to get mushy, here) with every day that I spend with him I find that I love David more and more. He is such a supportive, understanding partner, and I am so, so excited about the life that we're building here together. I am so thankful.

I will always be homesick, I imagine. I will always miss my family and friends. And although this week has been incredibly difficult for me, I'm coming out the other end of it feeling so much more secure about  the reasons I came here, and the reasons I'm staying. I'm ready for pretty much whatever gets thrown at me next.

*** The last time we were in Massachusetts, my father told a story about when I was young and first started performing on stage. I would get so nervous before performing that I would actually make myself sick. My father couldn't watch me work myself by decreeing "You are not allowed to perform anymore it's going to make you this upset!" That put an abrupt end to my stage fright.