I want to talk about how hard it actually is to live far away from your people.
Your kids.Your parents.Your siblings.Your friends.
We all do what we can, there’s texts and phone calls, emails and messenger. Any opportunity for a check in to just know what’s going on in their lives. We do whatever we can to just feel connected. For me, the connection is so important, if I’m not feeling that connection, I sometimes spiral a bit.
Even if I were to talk to my people every day, something would still be missing. It’s a part of me that is missing.
I can’t just go visit spontaneously, go grab dinner or drinks, go to the movies. We can’t even plan holidays easily.
I get to watch my nephews and my friends children grow up from a far and that’s hard.
Every visit, while thoroughly enjoyed, is exhausting. It’s a long drive down south, then it’s just a countdown to when I have to hit the road again for my long drive home.
Our long winter makes it even harder. The snow comes fast and hard and it’s severity is unpredictable. So I tend to play it safe and not travel too far through the winter months, which some winters, like this past one, seem to never end. Winter just makes life feel heavy.
Id love to go back to the days when I could enjoy lazy afternoons with the ones I love. Talking, laughs, quiet moments, good food.
Now everything is planned and scheduled. I always feel pressure to make every moment count and stay as long as I can. Pressure I put on myself.
We try to fit days, weeks, sometimes months of life updates into a few hours. It really isn’t ever enough.
It’s hard knowing that we’d be together for every birthday, every celebration, every good day, and every hard day if I didn’t live so far away. If I didn’t move so far away.
At times, I feel I’ve been abandoned and it breaks me, but the reality is, I made the decision to move north and start a life here. That decision sometimes weighs really hard on me. Really hard. I have spent days living with regret. It’s truly a kind of grief no one talks about.
At the end of the day, my family is still my family. They may not be right around the corner, but they are always a call or message away. Good days and hard days. I’ll visit as much as I can while the weather is nice and enjoy every moment of those visits.
I sit here in my beautiful home, with T and R and our puppies. I am surrounded by forest. There is no sound of sirens, no crime, no loud parties or fights I have to listen to. The only things that stumble through our yard are beautiful wild animals. There is no traffic, no line ups, no rude people. I couldn’t ask for any better. It’s peaceful and relaxing.
But, no matter how full my life may get, how peaceful and relaxed I may feel, there is always a huge part of me that wishes all my people were just down the road or around the corner.
Sometimes the peace outweighs the loneliness and sometimes the loneliness outweighs the peace.
I love my life, but miss all my people in it.
~Tasha