Here, there, and gone!

 

It is given so many names.

Some people call it an attachment disorder.

Others call it being footloose.

I've heard it described as the wanderlust.

And sometimes it is just seen as restless, but whatever it is, it is me.

I'm not quite sure why, but I suspect I was raised to be it, by whatever name you give it.

As children we only know what we live and I lived with my mother, father and siblings. We had extended family of course, but the core was simple and solid.

My first friends outside this unit appeared when I was almost five years old. Julie and Paul, I still remember their names. They lived across the street and sometime we were allowed to cross that street and play together. They were called friends and I took them for granted like I did my family.

Then we moved and I never saw them again. I didn't make new friends until after we moved again to Springfield and I started kindergarten. Billy Pearson and Shawn Patrick were near me alphabetically and they became my new friends. Strangely enough one or the other appeared, or reappeared for the next twenty years, including first dates and coming out parties. I even ran into Bill on Facebook and discovered he told his children about me when they went home to Springfield, which was many many years behind us.

In the middle of sixth grade we moved again. Just across town, but I lost contact with all my elementary school friends, including Kathy Thomas my best friend. We didn't have a way to travel back and forth across town back then, but I made a new friend. Sandy Kirkpatrick a red headed girl who liked to roller skate and was a patrol girl like me. One day in seventh grade the bus was too full to let me on and Sandy's dad drove me all the way out to my junior high. Sandy and I usually walked home together in the afternoon.

Of course right after seventh grade we moved again. This time to a small town called Chatham where my dad taught school. I went to eight grade at a school out in the middle of the country and made one friend there. I can't remember her name now, but she was a new girl like me, We ate lunch together and played on the old playground equipment after lunch.

Halfway through that school year we moved back to our old house in Springfield where I went to six years of elementary school. I just assumed I would pick up with my old friends, but it didn't really happen. Life is awkward when you are 13. By then I had long stopped missing old friends when we moved. I just knew they were out of my life and accepted it. I did reconnect with Kathy and we remained friends through our junior year in high school when I moved again.

This time to a town where my mother was born and raised. To her it was going home and I had aunts, uncles, great aunts and a grandma there. I had cousins too. They were almost like my siblings. We were close, but I didn't really make any super close girl friends here. I did date some boys who were in band with me and I went to Homecoming and Prom, but it was a strange experience. I felt like I was going through the motions and doing what I was supposed to be doing in a book or something. I didn't really feel like I was a part of it in any deep emotional way.

I had a very difficult time when my mother died, but other than that I just sort of know I will have to let go of anyone and everyone I like or love. 

I am divorced and my children are scattered all over the country in Washington, Arizona, and North Carolina. I expected that. They were brought up in a town where most children went somewhere else after they were out of school. I am very close to all of them.

Most of the other people in my life are like faces in a long parade that just keeps getting farther and farther away. I remember them fondly, but feel no real emotional attachment to most of them. I knew from the start that our relationship was what it was and that one day it would change and we would drift apart. Unlike my siblings who live here I don't really have any local friends. I do have lots of acquaintances and people I can talk to when we run into each other. 

It's not exactly out of sight out of mind, but it is very similar. I am unlikely to move from this apartment because it is so nice and so affordable, but I haven't met anyone yet that I want a deeper relationship with. It seems my life revolves around whoever is here and now and a few people who are so close they are really my family of the heart and as close or closer than my siblings.