That Time Again

For the first 18 years of my life (and a total of 22 out of my 28 years), I lived a 30-minute or less driving distance from the beach. I've never strongly considered myself a beach person, but the longer I'm away, the more I feel pulled back to it. Moving away has never been easy for me. I've done it twice: the first time, I was fresh out of college, and not exactly looking for such a drastic change, but lured by a school and a boy. Shortly after moving to the other side of the state, in the middle of the mountains, 300 miles from the ocean, the novelty started to wear off fast. By the time I graduated four years later I swore I'd never, ever live that far from sand and salt water ever again. 

And so I moved to Florida, with a beach 5 minutes away, just to be sure.

That turned out to be not quite right either - the beach part wasn't bad, but the part where there wasn't and probably would never be a job for me in my field was. I got to live out my beach bum fantasy for almost a year before returning back to my hometown, and I stayed there for another 3 years until I moved again, almost 2 years ago, back to my college town. I still can't decide if that's totally ironic or if it makes perfect sense. At least this time I brought the boy with me.

Living in the mountains hasn't been the miserable experience I remember it being the first time around. 

This time last year, just a few months after our move back across the state, to the mountains, I started to get homesick.