Back Where I Come From

Today's the day!!! The one I've been waiting for for months on end. Finally, when we finish loading down 2 (!!!) UHAULS and my SUV and hop in the car, we'll be headed to Tennessee with no return trip to Texas. It almost feels too good to be true. After five years living several states away from my family, my home, and everything I've always known, it feels (please note that I NEVER thought I'd say this) SO good to be coming back...back to where I come from. Back to where my precious mama has toiled for days, despite two excruciatingly painful knees, to get our new house sparkly clean. Where she and our family friend Jeanette have lined cabinets like it's their job. Where there's pumpkin bread, banana bread, avocadoes, tomatoes, and a fresh garden salad waiting in our new fridge. But most of all, where there's OPEN ARMS and LOVE waiting for us. It's such a humbling feeling, and such a blessing, to know that so many people...friends, neighbors, family...are on pins and needles waiting for the chance to love on us when we finally reach our destination. After eleven months of living you-know-what in Texas, with no support system, and being constantly berated and beat down by David's family, we are so in need of love, support, compassion...people to let us know that we're not in this alone. The good thing is, we've learned this year that, when push comes to shove, as a couple, we can go it alone, and we can survive, if not thrive. I'm reassured to know that we are able to be that emotionally, financially, physically independent. However, as a therapist-in-training, I, of all people, know that "no man is an island"...we are meant to live in community with one another, to care for each other as well as ourselves, to carry each other when it's too hard to walk. And that is exactly what our massive, incredible support network in Nashville will do for us, just as they have for my twenty-three years of life. I'm thrilled about setting up our new home. I'm so excited to start Vanderbilt. I can't wait to be back in a beautiful, sleepy, southern town, where football, church, sweet tea, pearls, rocking chairs, front porches, and relationships dominate. But most of all, I'm looking forward to knowing that the ones who are in our corner are not halfway across the country. I needed to get away. College was an amazingly powerful, formative time for me, and I'll be forever grateful to Wash. U., St. Louis, and the precious friends I made there for helping me find myself, get my legs under me, and embark upon my adult journey. It's great knowing I can make it on my own in an unfamiliar place, even through almost unbearable trials like my dad's illness and death and my own diagnosis with MS. But, it's even better knowing that I don't have to. It took a lot of growing up for me to realize that desiring to return to your roots isn't a sign of weakness or dependence. After all, when "back where I come from" is a place overflowing with love, support, laughter, joy, happiness, family, friends, opportunities, and beauty, why would a girl turn her back on it? After the year we've had, David and I need, above anything else, a clean slate. A chance to erase the mistakes of the year, to put the trials of family problems and his dad's death and a grad school we both hated behind us, to start anew, and to carve out for ourselves a simple, beautiful newly wed life that will make us smile when we look back on it at 80. I, for one, can't wait. In the words of my beloved Kenny Chesney, "Back where I come from, I'm a TENNESSEAN, I'm proud as anyone, that's where I come from!"