If there’s one thing I am good at, it’s burning my life to the ground and rebuilding it. I’m also really quite good at being overly dramatic. Alas. There’s some truth in it; I am *very good* at changing direction, and this year has proved to be no exception. You see, in January, my husband was offered a new job that would mean leaving our life in North Yorkshire and moving 150 miles away. While some of you out there might be the kind of people who never settle in one place, we had spent some time travelling before buying a house in our hometown and staying put for eight years. Our entire life was contained in this blissful bubble we had created. Our closest friends were mere minutes away, our jobs pleasantly commutable; we had a favourite forest up the road that felt like our own private woodland. Life was good, if not a little predictable.
So when Alex came home and told me he had been offered a job somewhere I had never even visited before, I told him to take it. We were itching for an adventure and had previously discussed Australia or Canada. This felt like the first step in what could be a new life for us. The kind of life where we didn’t stay put, where we explored new places and expanded our world beyond the HG postcode again. And while the world suddenly felt full of opportunities, it also felt scary to leave a life that fell so, well, easy. I mean, the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ must exist for a reason, right?
The first few months as we transitioned into this new life were tough. Alex spent five months living in a hotel hours away from me, while I stayed behind to sell the house and pack up our life into boxes with unhelpful labels that I thought made sense at the time. ‘Lava lamp shelf stuff’ and ‘useful crap from that drawer’ seemed funny in the moment, but less so when I was trying to find plasters at 2am after a DIY fail.
After what felt like a lifetime apart and endless hold-ups with our future home, the move suddenly loomed over us like a storm cloud that appeared in seemingly blue skies. I went from telling everyone I was ‘so ready for this to happen’ to tears as I said goodbye to my community of friends that had become my chosen family and a job I actually bounced out of bed for. Who walks away from a life like that? Us, apparently.
Now, nearly four months since we packed our life into a Luton and headed down the M6, I can safely say life feels good again. It’s a different kind of good. I miss my friends. I miss being able to pop round after a bad day and slob on my best friend’s sofa, a look of horror appearing on her fiancé’s face when he discovered I was round *again*. I miss seeing my parents a few times a week and the comfort of being in my childhood home. I miss the regulars from the cafe I worked at for the year before we left and my little work family who somehow made employment a joyous experience. Some days, I miss it all more and feel a wave of homesick nostalgia wash over me.
But other days, I can’t believe this is my life.
Other days, I pack up my paddle board in my battered old Audi and drive to the lake, where I strap Olive (my beautiful border terrier) into her life jacket and paddle peacefully into the centre of a lake so beautiful it transports me back to Canada. Other days, when my friends send me pictures of their laptops and the sunshine teasing them through a window, I feel exceptionally grateful that my morning consisted of making beautiful latte art for raft guides in a remote town in Wales.
So, here’s to starting again…again. Saying fuck it, let’s give it a go, and then actually making it work. Here’s to leaning into the unknown and jumping headfirst, hoping you somehow land on your feet.
Harrogate will always be my home, but isn’t the point of a home that no matter how far you wander, you can always go back?
Until next time,
LJ x
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