Changing my life

I have taken a new job in a new area of the country. I'm excited, scared, and a bit in a state of denial. My life is going to change, a lot. Of course, I am assuming it's for the better, that it will all be interesting and wonderful. Okay, that's what I hope, but I know there will be days I'll be thinking, "What the hell did I do?"

(When I was typing that last sentence, I was going to put "when I get home at night..." and I thought "home? For the next few months, what will be home? Back in PA? The apartment I'm renting?" And I may have freaked out a bit. Again.)

I've only done two major moves in my life: one when I was six and my move to Philadelphia 20 years ago. Of course, the move when I was six was just part of the whole growing-up gig, but the move to Philadelphia, well, that was a big one. My parents had moved a few months before. I finished the school year (I was teaching high school), packed up the apartment, and decided to give it a go out here. The trip out was a nightmare. My Civic was completely packed (my roommate cleared out a tunnel through my crap so that I would have some use of my rear-view mirror), it was 90+ degrees, I had no air conditioning. I cried pretty much the whole way. 

It's funny, but thinking back on it, I really didn't want to leave Toledo (I know, that simply can't be right.) But it was the only life I knew. All my friends, most of my relatives, all of my history, it was all in Toledo. And, yet, I knew leaving was absolutely the right thing to do. I can't say that there weren't times that I wanted to go back, but I had to leave. I had to seek the new life. And it was the single best thing I did. 

I sometimes wonder what I would have been if I would have stayed in Toledo. All I know is the best things about my life now are because I have left. There's a group of us from my old high school who left Toledo (sort of a weird fraternity), and we all talk about how the best decision of our life was getting the hell out. And when we go back, we look around and think, "There but the grace of God..."

So, my life is changing. I'm freaking out. But I'm choosing to believe that this will be the best thing.