Four years ago today we left our old home in Spanish Fork, UT and headed Eastward towards our new home in North Carolina. I say "our home in Spanish Fork", but by that time, it was no longer ours ... By the time we reached Moab that night, it belonged to this other couple who already had plans to expand the garage and finish the basement ... Such is life ...
When we lived in Utah I longed for the South. I missed my friends and the gentle rolling hills, covered in green for most of the year. I never knew I liked green so much as when I lived in Utah and I didn't have much of it at all around me ... I longed for the Southern food where every restaurant parking lot smells of bacon.
Now, that we have been here, we hardly ever see our friends - we're all too busy and then, there has been the pandemic ... With my vegan diet, I can hardly ever have any food that's appropriate for me and I can never truly dodge someone sneaking butter or cheese in my food or frying my fries in lard or bacon drippings in North Carolina ... I never stopped missing The Rockies. I miss my doctors who were small-town doctors that cared for the patient more than their career ladders, like they do in the big medical world of The Triangle. Sometimes I have doubted whether we made the right move ...
We always want and crave what is not right here, in front of us.
Four years later, missing the mountains and all, I still think we've made a good move. There is not a day that goes by where I don't gasp "wow! I am so happy we live here" when I look at the massive trees in my back yard or drive for 15 minutes through NC hardwood forests and don't encounter another car.
I love the people, even my neighbors, I love the green, I love the fact that you drive for 30 minutes and you're in a different city, with a different history, different landscape, different restaurants, and culture. I love the slow pace my heart is beating at right now, as compared to the way it was jerking around in my chest at 11,000 ft in Utah! I don't miss the Utah air, and not much about the Utah culture in general. I never felt like we really belonged there, gorgeous mountains, breath-taking sunsets, open spaces and all ...
I love a lot about NC still and NC still feels like home. I can hardly believe it's been four years, though. I look around and I feel like we didn't accomplish much, although, my husband has had two jobs since we moved here, we made tons of home improvements, we've made new friends, and reconnected with just a handful of the old ones, we traveled plenty around the area and out of the country (and even went back to The West a couple of times), we lost a cat, and got another one more than a year later, we welcomed family in our new home from all over the planet ... And just like that time flew. I guess this is how you know we made a good move: when time flies by fast because you're having too much fun.
No regrets and all, life is what you make of it with what you do have in front of you. Four years later, we're still taking one day at a time and making the most of it, right here, in the middle of the green North Carolina ... We are home. I have no doubt about that.
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