Things they won’t tell you

When you consider moving away from home you’ll get lots of advice. People will share their experience about moving away. Friends and family will give well wishes, promises of support, make commitments to stay in touch, friends will tell you nothing will change. However, there are things that people won’t tell you. They won’t tell you about all the missed events. The birthday party for your best friend’s child or grandchild you’ve never missed before, you will only see pictures of it on Facebook and hear about it from your other best friends. The school events you’ve always shared with your friends because your kids are the same age or you live near each other you’ll find your self sitting through them alone and missing those same events belonging to their kids. They’ll also fail to tell you that it’s more than just physically missing those events. You’ll miss them deep in your soul. They’ll make you homesick and question your decision to move away even though you know you made the right decision. They won’t tell you that some days the homesickness is so much it’s physically hard to breath. They won’t tell you that there will be a point that you’ll go back home to visit and feel like the outsider and feel like you don’t belong. That there is a point in the transition where you haven’t quite found your place in your new “home” but you no longer have a place at your old “home”. That point sucks.

And about all the things they did tell you….most of them were meant well but they were false. Things will change. People won’t come visit. They’ll talk about it, maybe attempt at making plans. It may happen occasionally, but it will be rare. Some will stay in touch, but mostly just at first. As time passes the communication lessens. Out of sight out of mind I guess. All of the advice was meant well, to encourage you. After all, are you going to want to move away if someone tells you that they’ll be excited to see you when you come home the first few months but after awhile they’ll usually be busy, or if they tell you that your friends will move on with their life and you will no longer hold the same place in their life you once did?

Change sucks, but it is needed in life. It’s not all bad. You’ll make new friends, new routines, new normals. It will never be the same, but will be a new same. Someday. I hope.