Home

I had an interesting sensation Saturday night.

I was on my way home from seeing some friends in San Antonio/San Marcos. It had been a fun couple of days and so good to see those old friends and even make a couple of new ones. However, driving back to Beeville at about 7 p.m., I was exhausted. I had halfway planned to stay another night with my friends, but I was tired to the point of being antisocial and I just wanted to sleep in my own bed.

What was interesting was that as I got closer to Beeville, I guess around the Karnes City/Kenedy area, I felt like I was getting close to home. That sentence sounds really simple and stupid, but I mean I had the feeling of coming back home. Like Beeville, my apartment, the whole forgotten South Texas wasteland between San Antonio and Corpus Christi is home to me now. It's been nine months since I moved here, and that was the first time I felt like this was home. (Sidenote: I'm really proud of myself for lasting this long, and for sticking out a whole year. This is the longest I've lived anywhere in 2.5 years). I felt relieved to be coming back. That was strange.

It's hard to admit to myself that I actually do like it here. It's so different from where I see/saw myself ever living. My friends here are not a conventional 25 year old's friends. The few people I know close to my age are married and have kids. My closest friend here is another single woman, but she's old enough to be my mom. I really enjoy my job and everyone I work with. I have plenty of time and opportunity to do things I enjoy doing outside of work. I'm alone a lot, but I find that to be the case wherever I am. I still miss my family and other friends, but I'm holding my own here. I still don't want to stay here forever, mostly because I want to keep moving forward, taking on more challenges, seeing more places, and moving up in my career. I think that's fair. But I've also realized in the past nine months that I owe it to myself to be happy wherever I am, even if it's not my first choice of where I'd like to be. If I don't do that, I'm just spending time unhappy when I could make the choice to be happy. And I'd be missing out on some really great and unexpected things.

So, for now, I am home.