A new decade starts – and hopefully a new chapter with positive change… Steven Covey says “Begin with the end in mind…” and so I will.
This time next year I hope I’m settled back in Maryland where I belong. I hope to have friends to welcome the new year with and a feeling of “home.” I hope for a few people I can call to celebrate my joys and to help me face tougher life moments as I will do for them. My friend Nancy back in Maryland never fails to make me laugh – a real life Lucille Ball. I hope we can go sailing this summer. I’ll be back in the groove of volunteering at Lifeline Dances for people with disabilities, going to Sugarloaf Crafts Fairs, volunteering for Single Volunteers of Baltimore and Annapolis, and walking in DC’s annual Walk for the Homeless and Race for the Cure.
Through my Minnesota adventure, I’ve lived the single person’s version of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” My sister called this my “emotional Outward Bound” - and so it was, especially this past year after my transplant friends left. Never have I ever been so alone – and hopefully never again.
There’s a saying – what we resist persists. I came here to escape the loneliness of being single in my 40’s. I hoped to connect with relatives and create a close circle of friends and family. What I experienced was far more loneliness than I’ve ever had. Despite countless social networking efforts, my Minnesota experience is a life without friends who share my reality. I also miss the traditions and patterns of the quilted life I had built on the East Coast that gave me meaning and identity. So, I’ve had an identity crisis – yes, an emotional outward bound. Time to wrap up the camping gear and get the heck off this isolated frozen lake!
I hope someday other single transplants read this. Here’s my best advice: ”It’s not you – it’s this place – it’s very lonely to be a transplant here – find other transplant friends – and if you don’t succeed and you’re questioning yourself and it’s eating away at your self-confidence and optimism, hightail it out of here asap! Life is to be lived, not endured. Go find your tribe!”
And so I will… Lesson learned!
I welcome in 2010 as hopefully it holds a 1200 mile move back to where I belong. If I didn’t appreciate the life I had there – single or not – I certainly do now. It was a wonderful life…
JTM