Starting Over

Well all the moving is behind me. I've officially left behind the city where I've grown so much over the last six years. I made my last trip up there this weekend, to see to a friend - and now I don't really have a reason to ever go back there.

And now I am starting over, in this place where I grew up - back with my family, and back in familiar settings. But so much is different this time around. Not just physically - this town has changed so much in the years I was gone, some places are almost unrecognizable, but also myself. I am not the same shy girl who left here all those years ago to start something new.

I am a woman now - though I feel like a kid more days than I feel like anything else. I am looking for a job - something I never had here the first time. I have had all these life shaping and changing experiences and I just don't feel like I fit here anymore.

But I am stuck here for the time being, until I can get things put together for moving on to graduate school and taking yet another giant leap forward in my life - but right now it feels like I am in this purgatory.

Nothing is moving, it's almost like I never left. I get treated the same, and have the same expectations put on me as I did when I really was a kid. It's frustrating to say the least, and I am trying to deal with this in the most gracious way possible, but it's hard. To know that I am so different from the person I used to be, but to be put back in the place I was when I left as if nothing has changed.

I'm still getting used to it, still unpacking, still getting settled, and starting the process of starting over.