When I was in high school, I used to talk with my friends about leaving Maine. One friend has always been adamant about staying in the Pine Tree State and she has made good on her promises, almost ten years later. She has remained and built a beautiful life for herself here. Other friends expressed their wish to leave, to find someplace else, with more people, more things to do, milder winters.
I was rather bipolar in the expression of my determination. Some days I would be vehement in declaring that I did not want to spend any more time in Maine. I wanted to live in a city, to do exciting things, working an exciting job, meeting exciting people. I wanted to become a Nora Ephron heroine. Other times, however, I would become more wishy-washy, more conflicted. Maine would be a good place to raise kids, sure. It would probably be a nice place to retire. But, then, so would New Hampshire or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. I generally tailored my declarations to temper the energy of whatever group I was in. When the vote was clearly in favor of staying, I said I’d rather go. When the group focused on the lack of people, opportunity, and growth between Boston and the coast where everyone who works in Boston takes their summer vacations, I offered a few defenses for “the way life should be.”
Six months ago, when I had begun the process of leaving my last job, I cried in my workplace’s parking lot to my brother over the phone: “I’m so scared I’m going to get stuck back in Maine.”
Today, you could say that I am, for all intents and purposes, ‘stuck’ here. But, sitting here, it feels like the version of me who was terrified by such a prospect existed eons ago. I still know her—maybe I still am her—but I feel ancient now in comparison. Before I was her, I was the version of myself who drove out into the rural parts of Pennsylvania every weekend rather than stay in the city where I lived. I took the long way to the store because it meant driving past open, empty fields that I wanted to lie down and sleep in.
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