I haven't written yet about how long I expect to hold this experiment. When I started, I figured it would be about six weeks. And here's why.
The whole reason I need to do this experiment, the reason I struggle with depression and anxiety and angst, is that I live where I don't want to live. This is hard to explain to a lot of people, especially the other people that live here...and love it.
It's not a bad place. It's beautiful. It's friendly. The weather is mild most of the time. I lived here on purpose for many years (about 13) and wasn't too upset about it. There are bike paths and creeks that weave their way through town. There are mountains on one side, and plains on the other. The sky is usually blue and the sun is usually shining. At night, there are stars.
Really, I'm sure it's one of the prettiest places to live in the country. And, one of the most affluent...which means that the parks and libraries and other public services are really good. There's plenty of access to good food, too. The outskirts of town are peppered with organic farms, and street markets about. The restaurants are great, and after living here for so long, I know exactly which ones to go to for a wonderful meal.
There's a university, and a modern art museum, and a performance art center. There's a place to go to watch street performers, or browse in a really good locally-owned bookstore. It's within reasonable driving distance to a major metropolitan center with an opera house and a small lake where I can rent a sailboat for the afternoon.
So what's the problem with being here? Why does it make me so sad to look out my window in the morning and see the pink light of a new day shining on the rocky cliffs that soar above the town. I don't know. It never used to make me cry.
Almost 5 years ago now, I moved away. I moved to the ocean, to a small beach town with palm trees reaching up to disapear into the daily blanket of fog. There was a bay, filled with parked sail boats. There was a state park of dry desolate hills. There was a coal-burning power plant, with dark dreary stacks that reached into the sky and spoiled the scenery. The town was filled with mostly ugly little houses crammed together on too-small lots. There were no sidewalks or streetlights in the residential areas. It took 20 minutes to drive into the nearest "real" town. The bus system was terrible, and there were no bike paths at all. I loved it.
It was the first place I had ever lived...ever been...where I actually felt at home. I lived there for a little over two years, and I loved it fiercely every minute that I was there. I explored every corner of it, in every spare afternoon or early morning I could find. That's the one thing I feel good about, I really did enjoy it while I had it. I didn't take it for granted or assume I would be able to make the most of it "later."
Which is a good thing, because here it is, "later" and I'm stuck in this beautiful Rocky Mountain town so far away from what feels like home that I cannot drive there in one day. No matter how early I leave in the morning or how late I stay up or how fast I go or how much caffineated soda I drink, I can't do it. I've tried.
It's a beautiful story, how I got here. Sweetie called me on the phone and, totally out of the blue, asked if I wanted to get married. I said yes, which is something I'd been thinking about doing for YEARS...about 15...ever since the last time we talked about it. We agreed that we would live in my beautiful beach town together, happily ever after! But at the time, I had just left a job, and rented out my house to a nice young couple who promised to take care of my cream-colored sofa. I had so much freedom and flexibility it seemed to make sense that I would come out here where we could be together while we both applied for jobs out there in paradise.
But the thing about paradise is...it's hard to get to. Neither of us can find decent jobs. We search on-line constantly, and we fly or drive out there as often as we can for networking and sometimes interviews. It's exhausting mentally, physically, emotionally and financially.
Here is my advice for anyone who lives somewhere they love and feel at home and feel happy. DO NOT LEAVE.
I wonder if I should have stayed put. I wonder if I should have said, "Sure I'll marry you! See you when you get here!"
But then, I might not be married at all! I can't really imagine that. It's only been two years but it's become impossible for me to imagine that I was ever really happy before we lived together and shared our lives. But I know I was...I was happy running on the beach and exploring the hills and watching the dolphins from a cave in the cliff overlooking the tide pools. But I wasn't in love, and I wasn't loved the way I am today...and those two things are kind of incomparable to anything else...any other kind of happiness.
Anyway, it's not worth thinking about. I didn't stay put. I came out here thinking it would be easy to find jobs and sell the house and pack up all our (mostly Sweetie's) stuff and go home. But it hasn't been. Nine days from now, I will have been here exactly two years.
That's what I said when I came out here...two years. When all the steps of immediate relocation started to seem overwhelmingly hard I said, "That's okay, Lover. We're not in a big hurry. We can live here a couple of years if we have to." That's exactly what I said. I remember the moment perfectly.
So, coming up on my two year mark of struggling to have a good attitude about being here, I started to imagine that it was inevitable we would be moving very soon. For a while, it even looked like it was happening. We finally got the house on the market, and were having a fair number of showings. Sweetie had a SECOND job interview scheduled at a place we both thought sounded like a good fit. I had adjusted my own work schedule to less than part time, and had the time and energy to make the move happen as soon as I got the word!
I was ready to call my tennants and tell them we were coming back. I would give them 30 day's notice, plus the remainder of the month. That meant we could move in on Novemeber first... a little more than 6 weeks away. That's why I planned on doing a 6 week happiness experiment. I didn't think I'd need it after October was over.
But when I got the word, it wasn't the one I was hoping for. And suddenly the days are getting shorter. The leaves are turning. The air is cooler in the morning. I actually like this, it reminds me of the fog that rolls in at night and doesn't burn off until the sunny afternoon arrives. But soon it will be winter. There will be snow on the rocky tops and I'll be curled around our wood burning stove, dreaming of palm trees, and marking my moods down so I can study them.
Maybe I can learn to be happy here.
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