i guess i've never talked about it on here, but when i moved to pittsburgh 2 years ago, i may have been running away. i'm still not 100% sure of this, but that's the closest analogy i can come up with. what was i running from? i still, to this day, do not have a complete answer to that question.
i could have been running from a lifetime of arguing. listening to my parents argue until they finally split up when i was 7. (i still consider this one of the best days of our lives.) arguing with every guy i ever dated. arguing with my brothers. arguing with my friends. i could have been running from 6 years of not so pleasant relationships and ex boyfriends still trying to be in the picture. i could have been running from the worst father/daughter relationship i ever believed could exist between my dad and i. i could have been running from the feeling of never being good enough for any of my so-called girlfriends, which may have led to the reason i have secluded myself from really making any here.
whatever it is i was running from, i had every intention of never turning back. people from my hometown talk about how everyone always comes back, but i've had multiple conversations include the phrase "lindsey is the only person i believe will never return."
it's not like i burned any bridges before i left, i left on a good note, on a "she's growing up, this is good for her, let her spread her wings" note. i go back once a month, and can walk back into the life i left, with no problems.
and it's not that i absolutely dread the place. to be honest, i get tremendously homesick if i'm gone longer than 4 or 5 weeks. homesick to the point that i can't do anything without getting emotional about it. homesick to the point that i break down in tears and hyperventilate until Justin holds me long enough to calm me down. but i've never considered the option of going home for good.
when i do spend a weekend at home, by sunday afternoon i'm spent. i'm ready to get in the car and drive the 2 hours back to sanity. my mom drives me crazy, in a good way for most of the weekend, but any longer than 4 or 5 days and i'm screaming inside. i can't just move back home and feel the way i felt for the first 23 years of my life.
can i?
i received a peculiar facebook message on friday, from a girl from home. not even a girl i'm friends with. i'm not even sure how she found me. her husband is the IT guy at my old school district. i've known him since i was in middle school, but i'm not friends with him on facebook either, so i was really weirded out at first.
she went on to say that there is an open, full-time with benefits, IT support position at my district, that they thought i might be interested in applying for. to quote her, "J feels he has a good idea of your interpersonal skills as well as your work ethic and that it may be mutually beneficial to you and to the school, should you decide to pursue the position."
cue. mouth. drop.
this is the job i always said i wanted from the first time i touched a computer. this is what i wrote about for college entrance essays. this was my dream job.
ironically i had the following conversation with my mom exactly 1 day prior to receiving this message:
me: i just don't know what i want to do anymore. i used to know exactly what i wanted, and exactly what it would take to get there. now, i have no idea what i want.
her: maybe you need to get back into the technical stuff, that's what you always wanted, maybe that's what you still want
how is this even real? how, during the single worst year of my whole life, when absolutely everything that could go wrong, did, how is this happening now? and why? why, of all times in the last year when i was scared for my future, unsure of my job, and unhappy in life overall, why do i have to make this decision now?
if i had received this message even 3 months ago, i probably would have shrugged it off and forgot about it. but now? now i dont know if i want to shrug it off, i dont know if i want to forget it. i certainly don't know if i want to go back home. i dont know i dont know i dont know!!
and i HATE not knowing.
who says i'd even get it if i applied? maybe i should just apply and see what happens. but what if i do get it? and really have that huge life-altering decision to make?
justin says that if i got it, he would start looking for jobs up there too. but does he really mean that? i don't know if i believe him. he has his whole life here. i can't ask him to leave that for me, can i? even if he's offering, i can't accept an offer like that, can i? offers like that aren't presented to me.
none of this makes any sense.
besides. isn't there a quote somewhere that says "you can't go home again?" do i even want to go home again? i didn't think so until friday, when i didn't delete that message and pretend it never came.
i'm at a fork in the road. and i have no idea what to do. and i've never trusted myself to make a decision that actually affected my own life, let alone someone elses.
i'm at a fork in the road.
