Yep, still talking (and blogging) about leaving North Carolina

 

Several weeks ago I was talking with a group of women and said something about North Carolina.  One of them gently chided me, telling me essentially that I needed to stop thinking about/comparing/missing North Carolina.  (I kindly and generously did not ask her if she had lived that way during her own traumatic move 25 years ago.)  What I did do was make a little mental note in my head not to mention North Carolina around her anymore.  Just to make my life easier, you know.

Because yes, I’m still talking about North Carolina.  I’m still blogging about it.  I’m still missing it, though not all the time and not so painfully.  I’m still even crying about it every now and then. 

I’m still working through being here instead of in North Carolina.  Sometimes I need to process “this is so different than what I’m used to.”  Sometimes I need to mourn what I’m missing.  Sometimes I need to celebrate something I’m particularly appreciating.  (No cockroaches—YAY!)  My point of reference in almost everything is still: North Carolina.  And why wouldn’t it be?  Seventeen (wonderful) years of (really happy) life are not something you can just turn away and walk away from.  I can’t, anyway.

I had a friend tell me that she had made a vow when she moved never to talk about her old home.  Instead she just told people when they asked that her family was loving their new home.  I really admire that, and I think the people around her probably like her better than the people here like me.  (As well they should, because she is really awesome.) 

But I have found some unexpected benefits of living this experience so openly.  I have found connections with people that never would have surfaced otherwise.  I know people that also have love North Carolina and can rejoice over the idea of a crepe myrtle with me.  (And tell me where to buy one here.)  I have met people who also have had their lives turned around and inside out and have wondered if they would live to tell the tale.  I have been treated with an amazing amount of kindess and compassion, sometimes from surprising sources. 

When my mother died so many years ago it defined me.  She died in January, and when I wrote our family Christmas letter 10 months later that was the first thing that came to my mind to write about.  For a long time I felt like I was Cindy-who’s-mother-has-died.  I knew that healing was happening when I had longer and longer stretches of time when I felt like myself without that layer of grief.

Leaving North Carolina has certainly defined more than the last year of my life.  And while I may not be Cindy-who-moved-and-is-still-struggling-with-it all of the time anymore, I think it will be a while before it’s all done and settled inside of me.  So yeah…I’m still talking about North Carolina.

Because really, who wouldn’t be??

 

PS—funny story for anyone still reading.  I started my Christmas letter in 1998 “Dear Family and Friends, this year sucked.”

A few days later I got  phone call from my mother’s sister, my Aunt June.  She said to me in her quavery southern voice “I can’t believe that Cynthia’s daughter would use the word ‘sucked’ in a Christmas letter.”

I said “Aunt June, my mother died, didn’t she?”

She agreed that she had indeed died.

I said “Aunt June, that really sucked, didn’t it.”

She agreed that it had sucked.

I said.  “I rest my case.”