Happy Anniversary Charlottesville! This one is a real milestone. Moving five hours away from the only place you've ever known might not seem like a big thing for some people- but for me, it was the biggest thing I've been through. Pair it with getting married three months earlier, and you've got a recipe for an anxious girl.
When I think about who I was when I moved to Charlottesville, I see someone that was so afraid. So mistrusting. So sad to leave everything I once knew. Some people would give anything to leave and start a new adventure- at that point, I would have given anything to stay in the same place forever. Comfortable. Full of the people I love. Easy.
^our first visit to Charlottesville.
Who wants to step outside of their comfort zone, anyways? Doesn't that kind of thing stretch you? Doesn't it come with hard parts and tears?
But I didn't want to think about that. I wanted to think about how I was upset at my husband- that he would think it was a good idea to take a job in some godforsaken place I'd never heard of. Sure it was pretty, it had mountains, it had good beer and good wine and good people from what I had heard, but I didn't care about any of that. I wanted to think about how I was angry at God for providing an opportunity like this that would move us from what we loved. From what I loved. From the life I had pictured for myself.
I'm so glad God doesn't give me the reins. I'm so glad His plans are the ones that get to happen, and mine are more like playing house. They are cute, they sound nice, but they aren't the real thing. I'm not saying we should never make plans, I'm just saying that maybe we should think of them as more of a draft.
If I could have drawn out life after marriage- it would have never looked like moving away. That would have been the last thing on the list of my things to do, if it even made the list, which it wouldn't. You get the point.
If I could have drawn out life after marriage- it would have never looked like moving away. That would have been the last thing on the list of my things to do, if it even made the list, which it wouldn't. You get the point.
And that girl that I see when I see me a year or so ago, I would have never thought she would feel the way I do now. In fact, I was pretty set on making sure I didn't like Charlottesville. I didn't have to hate it, but I was at least going to make sure I was semi-miserable living there, just so I didn't want to stay too long. Just so I kept my eye on the prize- getting back to PA asap. I was wrong to do that. I was wrong to not trust that God had His best in mind for us, and that Nick did, too.
His plan was a good one, I know that now. I know that getting outside of the severe comfort that I was in living in the same place all of my life was good for me. It stretched me more than I could have dreamed. And it is still stretching me. But after a year, I've come out on some other side of the trials and the loneliness of a new place, and there is so much beauty here.
I blame it a little bit on the South. People have told me that Charlottesville pulls you in and you'll never want to leave. It has this Southern charm, and it just romances you. As a Northerner, the weather is a big part of that. I don't understand how I'm literally two states further down and the weather is like fifty-million times more mild (and sunny). That is ridiculous. I didn't have to scrape my windshields more than about two times all winter. Just saying.
But it was not just the weather. Charlottesville invited me to candle-lit dinners with its local, farm to table foods. It took me out for breakfast and coffee at the farmer's market. It wine'd and dine'd me with the best local wines and micro brew beers. It took me to concerts free of charge any time I wanted on a Friday night. It showed me around its state and took me to the coast- less than three hours away! And Nick and I made memories. And it feels like ours- a place we get to be that only we know, and a place our family gets to visit and make memories with us.
I blame it on the people, too, though. I like to joke that I have one, maybe two friends in Charlottesville. Okay, that isn't really that much of a joke. But the quality of the friends I have made thus far has been that of family. No one will ever replace my family, but what I mean is these are people that I so easily feel a part of their lives, and they a part of mine. They are people that feel like family already. And all of this happened during a year that I decided I didn't need to make new friends because soon I'd be going back to PA.
I really didn't want to like Charlottesville, or the South for that matter. I wanted it to be a pretty place I'd come back to visit after a year of living there. A vacation spot. Not a home. But it is becoming just that.
We will always love Western PA. It will always be home. But that doesn't mean somewhere else can't be home, too. I don't know what our future in Charlottesville looks like, but I do know I'm excited for another year.
Thanks for making me go to CVille with you, Nick. And thanks for thinking it was a good decision. It was.
And sorry for not writing a post about our anniversary. I would have, but I'm an extremely inconsistent blog-writer.
