No, I dont miss New Jersey at all. I miss the friends that I had there. I gre to love most of them like family. Stable whole hearted Denise who, whenever my idea were in danger of being preposterous, grabbed the balloon string and safely guided it back into our atmosphere. Funny but just as stable Andi who left the forest and found her ultimate dream showing me in the process that life after divorce is indeed obtainable. Wild and crazy Kristen who was unpredictable yet very predictable which only served to make her more loveable. Kindred spirit Michelle who shared my love for handmade things and things that werent on the beaten path but slightly to the left. Only she would understand that so really dont even try.
I even had a guy that i could always turn to, my John. Nine times out of ten he was there to listen if absolutely nothing else to my foolish moments, my crying moments, my really in pain moments that i covered with vodka and tried to laugh off. And Steve. One of the two husbands that I trust with just about all aspects of my life. The other being Aaron. I trust these guys so much that if anything happened to me, i would trust them and their wives to raise my children to be strong outstanding adults.
But do I miss the North? No. I never finished school and I didnt do that well in high school because neither really interested me. The reult is that I will never be anything in the job market. I have retail skills but more importantly, i have the knowledge that all the skill in the world isnt going to help me when faced with someone who has a piece of paper from a school saying that they know how to do it in theory. They will always get the promotion. They will always be able to raise three kids on that salary.
I live in New Jersey for three years on my own as an adult and trust me when I say that when the opportunity to leave came along, anyone of my friends can tell you, I didnt waver for a moment. In fact several of my friends remarked that they'd never thought I'd actually do it. I dont know why. I grew up uncomfortable in NJ so it came as no surprise to me when coming back as an adult sucked even more than being there as a teen.
Let me explain. In middle school I developed an identity crisis. I seriously thought that my skin color was a grandiose mistake on Gods part. He meant to make me white, I just knew it so I acted white. I said like every third, like, word, and I like, couldnt, like, stop, like, saying it. My family hated talking to me because of that and judging by the fact that simply typing it all these years annoyed me I can understand how they felt. I also had a body image problem. I was fat. I was very fat and judging by the looks of my family tree I wasnt going to get thin. My growing addiction to chocolate which made my emotional state plateau didnt help my physical state which cause my emotional state to then plummet.
It was a huge culture shock when I moved to North Carolina and discovered much to my horrible dismay, I was black! Insert huge thatrical gasp here. I found out that the way I thought was wrong. The way I dressed, was wrong. The music I listened to was wrong. Even the way I ate was wrong. Ribs??? WTF?? Why would I want ribs?? Sweet potato pudding?? Eeewww! Cole slaw, black eyed peas, cabbage, like even! Pigs feet and chitterlin?? You have lost your fool mind! I was used to my family turning their nose up at me when i turned down 'good southern cooking' but a campus full of other black people wondering what planet i had come from because i sneered when they ate parts of animals I hadnt even dreamed of touching...
So i learned to eat ribs. I even learned to eat pork chops. You can hang up the rest of this sentence including the other foods. I'm past the color crisis and they still will never touch my lips.
But this amazing thing happened. The 'blacker' I turned, the more wanted i felt. I cant explain it but coming south made me feel accepted. When I got back to NJ at Christmas time i stared at my friends and for the most fleetingly embarrassing moments wondered what the hell we ever had in common.
Skip forward over those bad years and think of me as an adult. I lived in the south with the roomate i called husband and actually liked it. Hated the accent. Hated the fact that where we lived i swear it was one big pond of inbreeding. I liked it. I could afford it.
Skip a few more years. I moved to Nj and suddenly all those feelings of finding someplace I belonged went poof in a puff of smoke that I couldnt even see the vapor of. I had my friends that have always been more like sisters than anything else but now I was a grown woman and we all had lives. My friends had other friends and those friends didnt exactly want me around.
I never had that problem with Denise. We mainly dealt one on one and then one on two when cuddly David joined the picture. One on two when Steve was here, and it was comfortable. The rare occasions when Michelle and I met up, there wasnt much talking because honestly there never really needed to be. We're both people that are content to be with people that we can be ourselves around. Now Andi. God I love Andi, shes my dearest and oldest friend (we have quite literally been friends for 22 years almost) I dont have to do anything but be me when I'm with Andi. The problem. Me had changed. I was now an insecure person that didnt want to pulled out of her shell but at the same time kept casting the line out there to have someone pull. She always pulled. Thank God for her pulling. But when i got around her new friends i suddenly felt like 'WTF?? I dont belong here!' They tolorated me because I was Andis friend. If I had to pick anyone out of that group that treated me like I was their friend with or without Andi, besides Aaron, it would be Kristen and Katie.
So when I made the choice to leave NJ it as painful because of those people, but now let me explain why it wasnt painful.
I already expained why I would only be able to work menial jobs. I never liked school and being an adult didnt help. As much as I wanted a better life for my children and I there was no way in hell or Gods Green earth that it was going to happen. I couldnt even afford school if I had wanted to go back. I had no childcare and although I could take the bus almost anywhere, it was tedious and long and took me away from my kids. All i ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother. Being away from my children is physically painful but in NJ i had to leave my house and work for people who abused me and made me feel like a piece of gum somone spat out and a dog pissed on. Finally I couldnt take it.
North Carolina has afforded me the chance to be here for my kids night and day. It sometimes ,makes me want to scream but oh freaking well.
I get to raise my children in a house where my sleep doesnt depend on a noisy neighbor. I dont feel like my kids are growing up to be thuggy aliens that think promiscuity and drug use is cool and that speak a whole nother language not meant for civilized ears.
So if I say I miss NJ on facebook or twitter , please know that I miss the people that I left behind. The state itself could boil away into the ocean for all I care so lomg as my friends got away safe.
I may cry a little when I see pictures of Andis wedding because I had fun there and encountered my very last crush. I may cry when I see pictures of Denise pregnant with David because Ive gotten to know him as a baby and I am going to miss the weekly lunches because I am missing him grow up.
I am adult who battles cronic depression. I cry, I get moody, I look at pictures of my friends and watch on facebook how they go to parties and concerts, and I cry a little more than I go on MY facebook, or MY twitter, or MY blog and whine about missing them but at least Ai am venting on my outlets instead of running back up to NJ where i was miserable and in one huge loop of depression with highs and lows that didnt really seem different. I am an adult. I will get over it. I will relapse. If you see the whine simply serve cheese, admire the violin playing a sob song in the background, make sure I am not in posession of a rifle and not near a tall bulding and move on.
This too shall pass and come back. It will be okay and I will be okay. Im closer to where I belong and while I pretty much blabbered and jumped around this whole blog, you understand and get the point and more importantly you who care know that if I can release it, Im going to okay for another day.
Single and blogging has a signifigantly lighter chest at the moment. Dammit now my bra wont fit...
LOL! Made ya laugh!
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