Three Years

As of October 3nd I have lived in Nashville for three whole years. Crazy. Three years ago I got into my car, with red rimmed eyes, scared as fuck, and headed East. The journey had started, the excitement started setting in the second day, there was no going back, and it was me and the road.

The roadtrip was and wasn't what I thought it would be. The memories of Horseshoe Bend still blow my mind, the entire trip is worth that one morning alone. Driving by different state signs, looking into gas station shops for cheap blankets, meeting a blogging friend in person, seeing Blue Hole in New Mexico. And even if the places visited weren't enough, the fact that I went solo across the states and didn't even think much about it. The eyes red rimmed from crying weren't about the journey, but how far the destination was from home.

But I've written about that part several times before, and while it might be good to revisit in depth again someday, today is about Nashville and the time I've spent here. I definitely look more fondly on the 5 days it took to get here than I do on the three years. There's been a lot of hard work to be done here. Not in jobs, but in my mind. I promised myself that this was the last get up and go, that after this it was time to stick it out and face it. I had begun to recognize the need for financial stability so my lacking bank account kept me accountable and in one spot.

Here I pause, not sure how to continue. I've had such a block when talking about or writing about Nashville. I've wanted it to be pretty, I think I am still comparing reality with the idea I had in my mind when I moved here. This grand change that would all lead to me living the American Dream. I would move here, get in with a job I loved, make friends and line dance all the time, meet a man that grew up around farms, a slow and steady type. I'd at some point fall in love, with the man, with the career, with the city. I didn't think about skeletons in the closet, or people being married out here at 22, or that I still didn't know what I wanted to do or how to get to that dream career. I didn't think about my demons I had yet to work through, the self acceptance I did not have. I didn't think about how this city was growing at an alarming rate and that traffic wasn't all that much better than the place I left. Didn't think about how I was moving from one place where buildings were popping up all over to another.

I didn't think about how it would be to start over in a city where I didn't know one single person. That the times I had up and moved before I had always known a couple people, or had school or a job to gather friends with. Truthfully, I didn't think about picking up and leaving Nashville not just because of low funds but because the idea of starting over again, just like I had here, seemed terrifying. I was tired.

It was good that I didn't think about any of that, because it got me here. If I had known all those details I probably would have stayed put, miserable. That's not to say I couldn't have turned it around at home, but I wasn't on the path to.



I am not disappointed that I came here three years ago. I am even glad I have stayed. People have told me it's okay to give up on this place, it's okay to come home, but something inside me doggedly protested. I don't know what the future holds when this lease is up. I want to say I'll have an incredibly fitting job that I make good great money at that affords me a room and a bathroom in a house and a backyard so I can adopt a dog. The other part of me wonders if it's time to find those things a lot closer to home, because while still young and healthy, my parents won't be around forever and the reality of that, and the maximizing of the time I have left, feels important.
And still yet there a deeper part of me thinking that it's not time to settle down yet. That I may have bounced between Portland and home and then here but it wasn't ALL about running. There was truth to wanting to see and try new things. The realities of what I want to experience are opening up again, and they are scary, and I think that's why I talked myself out of them before, but they are strong and I want to chase them because I don't want to keep asking "is this all there is?"

Where does that leave me, three years and four months in? Dreaming, wondering, exploring ideas and getting the most I can out of Nashville, just in case it's time to go somewhere new soon.

I'm grateful, I wasn't when I started writing this, but I am now. Nashville was nothing like I dreamed it to be, and that was hard, but the lessons I'm learning and the work I am doing make it so very worth it.

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