On Moving West…
You know, the really funny thing is, I somehow thought that we could make this change — I mean really change practically everything about our lives — and not have it be quite so disruptive. You laugh. Who wouldn’t?
I didn’t. I mean, who knew about all the things we’d leave behind in search of that “other thing” we’d always dreamed of. And don’t get me wrong. I have absolutely no regrets. We are in control now. Of our lives, and of our destinies. We do what we want to do and we live the way we want to live. We accept nothing and no one we don’t want to deal with, at least within reason, and we like our lives. We really like our lives!
But I do miss the world we’d built, sometimes. I miss the friendships, and the people, and the times, and the freedoms, and the places, and the money, and all the trappings that went along with the prison that we loved and hated and fought so hard to be free of.
And then there’s Freedom.
Freedom to control our own destinies. In truth, it is a willingness and a want. Because it’s not so much easier as it is more fulfilling. We could have stayed where we were — making money — living high — but we might never have known the freedom of flight, or the flight to freedom. Might never have known what it felt like to shake the reigns free and say “fuck you” to everything else we’d known and built and poured our hearts and souls into for a thousand years, or at least as long as our families had lived in servitude to somebody else.
Freedom. It means no one’s there to save you when you fuck up. No one to come through when you run short. No answers to the eternal question of back up.
But isn’t that what we want(ed)? Still do? Isn’t that worth it all? Because when the other side meets us in the middle and we are able to look around and see something successful — something WE made, and no one else did — then! Then, we are happy. Fulfilled. Free of anything and everyone, despite the days and weeks and years we lost when we changed.
Despite the friends we miss so desperately, and the pieces of our lives we loved so much.
Nobody can take away the pride I feel every time I look at the lives we’ve made for ourselves!
Nobody.
We’re two kids who came from nothing, with nothing, and hit the ground of adulthood completely unprepared. And yet, despite every odd (and end), we made lives we are proud of. Lives people might envy! Lives to be proud of!
We are children who failed, then learned. Who knew only ignorance, foolishness, and fear.
But we grew beyond that. All of it! We made it past the foolishness and the embarrassment, and the plain old dumbness that defined us. Not that we’re wise. (I wish!)
But we are better armed. Better informed. And more sure of who sits behind anybody else’s mask when we look in the mirror!