Grass Is Greener

Wrote this the Wednesday night of my departure from Etown and it's taken this long for Blogger to stop being a giant bag of douche:

I cried again when I left. It was harder than the first time when I still held the belief that I would be back in just a few short months. It was so much harder to say goodbye while thinking of how I had no idea if I could ever come back. I don’t just mean for a visit, either. Visits just aren’t good enough. They aren’t good enough for me and they aren’t good enough for these people I’ve grown to call my “other family.” It feels wrong to just visit them. Like I’m just teasing. Like I’m not serious about it. Like I don’t think, at least once a day, how much I would do anything to go back and stay.
I wish I was exaggerating. I wish it wasn’t a constant longing. I wish I didn’t have to wake up every morning and realize that I’m in a bedroom, alone, in my parents’ house on the other side of the country from the room I should be in. The room that I shared with Elisabeth, that served as my home for a year, that contained so many memories and so much love and laughter. That is the room I should be in when I wake up every day. But it’s not.
And what’s holding me back? What on earth could keep me from the one place where I really, truly belong? It’s the same thing we all hear in news on a daily basis. If only we all had a little more money, everything would be better.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” I’ve known this since I was old enough to sit and pay attention in Sunday school. I won’t lie, I love money. I love having it. Having money means freedom. I can buy whatever I want, go wherever I want, see whatever I want. Absolute freedom. Freedom comes with a cost, and it’s the everyday currency. It’s not lives or wars or peace treaties. When it all comes down to it, it’s money. Money, money, money. And let me tell you, if I had $50,000, there’s only one place I would be.
People ask me all the time how I ended up there. How could a girl, born and raised in San Diego, California, a city girl, choose to live in a place that is literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dairy farms and the occasional McDonalds? When people ask me this it’s because they don’t get it. I mean, they ask me because they think it’s ridiculous. San Diego has near-perfect climate, four beaches within a thirty-mile radius, beautiful scenery and sunshine 52 weeks of the year. They honestly don’t get it.
They don’t get that San Diego is always the same. That the people are always the same, narrow-minded, judgmental people. That the streets are always the same. That the idiots are always the same. Don’t they get it? Don’t they understand what it’s like to be bored? Don’t they understand that the novelty of going to the same places and seeing all the same faces and driving all the same streets all the time wears off and becomes…boring? They may think cow towns are boring, but I have to disagree. Sure, you may have to drive a little further to find a mall or a good restaurant or a Wawa, but adventures happen on the way there. Yeah, you might get snowed in once or twice a year, but who doesn’t enjoy a little time off from studying to go play in the snow?
My point is, people may think San Diego is exciting, but I think having different adventures every day, on the road, in the dorms, around the town…all that is way more exciting. It requires imagination, patience and good humor. It requires people who are all vastly different, yet all equally good.
So is it really a ridiculous concept? Do you really need to ask me why I’m so desperate to come back?
I think the answer is fairly obvious. I suppose the grass may look greener on the other side, but, honey, I’ve been on both sides of the fence and I can tell you for certain that the grass is greener in Elizabethtown.