Movers, Stayers, and Lonely Hearts

I recently read an editorial on the concept of movers and stayers.  Stayers are the people who, for the most part, are satisfied with living in one region for very long stretches of time, be it their hometown, county, or state.  Stayers like the idea of a permanent residence to call home.  Movers never stay in one place too long.  A few months or years in a place and they're ready to move on.  They're travelers,  be it world or country or throughout their state.  Movers are a romanticized bunch.  I think all of us, whether mover or stayer, likes the idea of a new place, of adventures and new things.  But stayers like that idea as long as they come home after a little while.  Stayers like knowing where home is.

I know many movers.  A dear friend of mine left home at seventeen, spent a few years across the country, spent summers in Europe, did a short stint in Tennessee, and is headed to Dresden, Germany now.  She has always been brave.  Others in my life are similar.  They seem so carefree when it comes to their next home.  Home is whatever and wherever they want it to be.

As much as I would love to be a mover, someone who thrives on making new places home for a little while before moving on, I am a stayer.  I love traveling, but I love returning to the one place that feels like home even more.  I often feel jealous of movers, of how exciting their lives must be, of how easily they make friends in foreign places where they know no one.  I don't know how they do those things.  

I made my first big move far away from home last summer.  (I'd moved fifty miles away for college, but even then, I never quite felt like Natchitoches was home.). I've lived in Austin for nine months now.  For some movers, that's enough time to move somewhere, make friends, and move away again.  But I'm not a mover, remember, and in these nine months, I've not yet make Austin home.  I don't think I really know how to do that.

I hope that maybe Austin would feel like home when my husband and I were in our own apartment with all of our things.  (We're moving in a week.)  And it hope that finding a teaching job and being back in a middle school classroom will make this home.  And I'm hoping that making some friends will make this feel like home.

But the truth is, an apartment is just a box, just like the one we live in now.  And a job is just something to occupy my time.  And honestly, I'm not very good at making friends, I've discovered.  I don't know how to connect with people when we don't already have some commonality, like classes together or mutual friends.

When it boils down to it, Austin doesn't feel like home because I'm painfully lonely here.

A few years ago, after a nasty breakup, I decided that as long as you like yourself, you're never lonely.  I thought that, while you may be alone, enjoying your own company means you're never lonely.  I decided that, though, when I was surrounded by people who loved me. I lived with my parents and brother and spent most of my nights with my best friend, the man to whom I'm now married.

 I realize now that even if you love yourself, you are not enough company.  Extroverted people like myself thrive on the energy of others.  And I don't get that energy here.  I have a loving husbands who works an opposite schedule than me.  And I have two or three friends here.  But I'm missing my best friends and my family.  I'm missing the people whose presence alone energized me and made me feel good.  I am missing what made home in Louisiana feel like home.

Everyone in Alexandria wants to get out of there.  Every person there has a gripe to make or an opinion about why CenLa sucks.  I get that there aren't a whole lot of draws for young adults.  I understand that there is one bar that has a monopoly on decent places to drink.  I agree that there is one coffee shop worth frequenting even if you have to see someone you dislike there.  I fully agree that Alexandria is so small that your past constantly finds you.

But I don't feel like CenLa is home because of bars and coffee shops; if a choice of places for good beer and dark coffee was what comprised home, I would love Austin.  CenLa is home because I can drive it with my eyes closed, because I know where I'm going to lunch every Friday of Lent, because going to that one decent bar on a given night guarantees that I'll see a friend who has a seat for me, because I know the exact meal I'll order from Oriental Wok, because I can visit my old job and still feel welcome there, because someone will tell me how much I look like my mom or act like my dad and remind me that I come from strong roots deeply bedded in rich Louisiana soil.

I'm not a mover, but I have moved.  I'm a stayer who doesn't love the place she's staying.