Roots

Here is what I am slowly (and extremely hesitantly) coming to realize. We will never live in San Diego. In fact, we will probably never live anywhere but here, give or take a couple hundred miles.

I wish that we were the type of people who could float around, who can pick up and move and start over again and again. I wish that our roots weren't so deep, so strong, that the idea of moving away from everything we know wasn't terrifying. I imagine these people, so unlike me, so carefree and light. And I wish I was like that.

Aside from the obvious appeal of the ocean, I think I have a misconception that moving to a beach town could somehow magically transform me into a different person. I imagine myself in flowy skirts and bare feet. A free spirit that laughs loudly and shrugs off sandy car seats. I convinced myself that being in a different place would turn me into a different (and happier) person. I would have more energy, whisking up dinner from scratch and dancing wildly around the kitchen. I would act sillier and feel lighter, without the weight of life on my shoulders.

But I am slowly recognizing that being in a different place can't change me into a different person. Moving to a place like San Diego would just mean I am the same person, with the same worries and insecurities, just living near an ocean.

Near an ocean and away from my security. My support.

And even though sometimes I wish my wings were stronger than my roots, I am glad for those roots. I am glad that our families are so close and can help us and support us without having to get on an airplane. We have built our family here. I have great friends here. And we are people who need our family and friends, who depend on our family and friends. I do not have a strong enough inside to move away from the people who give me strength from the outside.

It may sound crazy that I even have to have this revelation, but I am trying to teach myself that this is okay. It's okay that I am not a drifter. It's okay that my home is here, and will probably always be here. It's okay that I will never be a different person than the one I am. And if I want to change something, moving won't do it for me, I have to do the work myself.

But it is hard. It just might be a lesson I have to teach myself over and over. Because there's that part of me, when I watch House Hunters International, when I read a book like Eat Pray Love, that aches to do something else, to be somewhere else, to be someone else. To uproot my family and drag them across the country to live with the salty wind in our hair and the sand in our toes.

(I wrote about this same type of feeling once before. Clearly it is one of the lifelong lessons I will have to have on Repeat.)

xoxo, christine