It has been a little over a year now since I left and moved away from Richmond.
Granted, only to the bay, which is a second home and place of familiarity in and of itself, but it’s the first time I have ever lived anywhere other than in the city I have called home for my entire life.
This is not something I have ever explicitly shared on the internet, and something that many people still don’t really know about me, though here and there over the course of the year it has been implied and referenced in varying ways or conveyed in person to various individuals.
But to spell it out, a year ago I packed up my apartment in The Fan and (after many many trips because I stubbornly refused to rent some sort of Uhaul which made the whole process way harder than it needed to be…) moved to the bay.
The move was made for a number of reasons, and I wasn’t really sure how long I’d be there, but it was mostly an initial attempt at listening to a voice I have had echoing in me for several years that I hadn’t fully listened to until that point.
A voice telling me I needed to go.
I have been feeling the tug to move away and go off and do something else for a while, but the various doors I pursued stayed closed and the timing just never seemed right. That, and there wasn’t any one reason to really go other than just the feeling that, for some reason, I needed to.
This was coupled with the fact that it wasn’t easy for me to leave Richmond.
Because despite the fact that I had felt the tug to leave, I’ve yet to find a place that I love as much as this city. I still get teary eyed driving down the cobblestone streets of my old neighborhood and there isn’t a block in the whole city that doesn’t have some sort of memory associated with it.
No matter where I am in the world, and whether or not I ever permanently come back, it will always be my home.
It is, perhaps, a case of not realizing what you have until it’s gone.
But I actually don’t think that was ever really the case. I have had a hard time leaving Richmond because I have always known what I’ve had there. It’s a place I will never not love with every fiber of my being.
But what I eventually came to realize was that, one, just because I didn’t have a practical or subbstantal reason for wanting to leave, it didn’t mean I was running away from something. And, two, it would never be the right time to leave. It would always be comfortable and this place would always be my home. But there was also the realization that the more time went on, the more my motivation for staying was out of fear, and if there is one thing I refuse to allow to influence the choices I make in my life, it’s that.
And so I have been gone for a year.
Living in a small town on the bay where I knew no one but have over the course of the past four seasons, made some of the dearest friends and have had some of the most important revelations and experiences in my life.
Most are simple in nature, but I have found that it is in simplicity that the most clarity comes.
This place on the water has become yet another home for me. It has been my Walden pond of sorts, (something I have written about here) my Thoroughvian experiment to suss out what is most important in my life and to see what I could do without in order to find what it was I needed to hold onto.
Although, all of that being said, I have to admit that I have not spent more than two consecutive weeks there during the entire year. I have still been on the go. Back to Richmond (much more than I thought I would be… turns out an hour and half isn’t really far enough to be away from it for any length of time), New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, The Wild and Wonderful Road Trip (a two month cross country road trip involving 30 states), and then most recently England and Greece.
All of that being said, it was always meant to be temporary, a stepping stone to the next thing.
I feel as though I have been waiting and seeking that next thing with a somewhat exhausting vigilance and searching which has at times led me to not really and truly appreciate where I presently am and the gift that this season has been. And now that I feel it coming to a close, I am wanting to hang onto it, to not let go.
But there is something on the horizon for me. A thing I feel sure about, as scary as it feels too.
But even that is a confirmation.
The fear.
The push it is giving me in the direction it emanates from is sign enough for me that this is the next right thing.