First Morning

In 2007, I woke up in a fancy furnished bedroom in a rich family's house in Irvine, California.

In 2008, I woke up in a cramped travel trailer parked outside Yellowstone Lake. 

In 2012, I woke up on a Thermarest in a nylon tent beneath a blue tarp in the cloud forest of northwestern Honduras. 

Later in 2012, I woke up in a hotel in downtown Queretaro, Queretaro, Mexico, about to begin my 27 months of Peace Corps service. 

For me, waking up in a new place for the first time is the worst feeling in the world. 

There are so many unknowns. Will I like this job? Will I like this town? Will I make friends? Will my landlords turn out to be douchebags, or will I find cockroaches coming out of the drains in the bathroom, or will I finally get eaten by a critter with sharp teeth? Will I be able to make ends meet? Will I meet a guy here?

Will I stay here forever?

I've talked before about how many times I've moved. New jobs, new places, new life. The longest I've ever stayed somewhere since high school was 23 months in graduate school, followed by this past 16 months in Texas. You'd think by now I'd be used to moving, to facing these unknowns. You'd think they wouldn't haunt me so much. Sure, I've hardened myself to be able to take pretty much anything these changes can throw at me, but it doesn't mean I don't still get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach on that very first morning.

Perhaps it's an odd thing, to think of something so "tame" as that as the worst feeling in the world. I suppose childbirth is probably worse. Or heartbreak. (I'd say waking up for the first time after a heartbreak might be worse, come to think about it.) In my last post I mind-barfed about how scared I was of getting the Montana job. Well, I got it. I accepted it. And that fear is gone now. 

All that's left is the dread of that first morning. 

I feel like, in the past, if I could get through that, the rest was pie. Getting there isn't the problem; getting there is a task, a concrete thing, a job to do, with planning and complications and problems that you face and then they're done. But after that? What is there? Nothing, but waiting, waiting to see how things are going to turn out.

And it's a clean slate.

Better not screw this up. 

And it's worse this time, because Montana...this could be it. Permanent. Life. Forever. 

Better not screw this up. 

My eyes open. I am on the bed, but which way is it facing? The window's all wrong; it should be on the other side. It's too small. This room is too small. The sounds outside are different, wrong. Oh, yes: I am in Montana. I am not in Texas.

With my glasses lying on the bedside table, I can't see a thing, just fuzzy shadows, light filtering through the blinds. I stare up at the ceiling and choke back the dread. Today I will go to work for the first time. What will I wear? That doesn't matter. What will my coworkers think of me? What will I do? Will I make stupid jokes, embarrass myself, have to explain for the thousandth time what my backstory is? What will I do when I get home? Where will I go? Will I go for a hike? Will I watch TV? Is this going to be the first day of a routine that is repeated over and over again, thousands of times?

Better make it count, then. Today is the day. This day will define all the rest. 

No pressure.

I reach for my glasses.

Stockholm Syndrome

Warning: mind barfing. I am not going to attempt to turn this into a cohesive blog entry; it's more what's going through my head right now.

Stockholm Syndrome is the psychological phenomenon that occurs when victims (of, say, kidnapping for example) develop feelings of empathy toward their captors. A quick skim through Wikipedia will tell you that the response is perhaps the brain's way of dealing with trauma; if one can empathize with his/her enemies, he/she may view them as less of a threat. For people undergoing trauma day after day, it makes sense. 

I'm thinking of this because, since I got back from a job interview for my dream job in Montana, I have been overwhelmed by the most ridiculous feeling: I don't want to leave Fort Stockton.

This is, of course, completely ridiculous. I hate this town. I hate how hot it is, how the only place to shop is a crappy Wal-Mart, how I have to listen to truck traffic all day, how the only thing that makes a wave in this town is when they build a new truck stop. I hate the high cost of living and the lack of public land to go hiking/biking/jogging on. But I don't want to leave. I feel like it's my own personal form of Stockholm Syndrome. 

I used to love moving. I used to love packing up my crap, driving across the country, and settling in for another six-month adventure in a new part of the world. It was a good thing I loved it, because I sure did it a lot.

Since graduating from high school, I've had 33 roommates; I have moved 13 times (not counting any short-term projects that lasted less than 3 months, of which there were at least 4); and I have lived in 7 states and 3 countries. 

So if given the opportunity to take a (better paying and probably much more exciting) job in Missoula, Montana, why the hell would I ever turn it down?

I don't know. But I'm sure thinking about it. 

I don't understand what the problem is. I've made friends, lost friends, loved jobs, hated jobs, moved, stayed, wanted to move but couldn't, didn't want to move but moved anyway, and none of it ever bothered me. Water off a duck's back. Shattered friendships, lost acquaintances, no big deal. I was used to it. Makes me sound callous, I know, but come on; how else could I stay sane with so much change? 

Coming to Fort Stockton was hard - I knew it would be a tough place to live, that it would be difficult to find friends. But maybe the key thing is the promise I made to myself: that if I couldn't stand it after 6 months (which later became a year), I would move again. 

And I didn't.

It was my first ever permanent job, so I did things like buy actual furniture and turn my apartment, however crappy it is, into the best "home" I could manage. Maybe that's part of my problem; like it or not, I have invested myself, however little, into this town, and perhaps that makes it harder to think about leaving.

Granted, I never really had anywhere else to go. But I settled into a routine in Fort Stockton that involved a lot of Netflix, a repetitive but functional exercise routine, and the development of a very important facet of my life: writing. I found ways to fill the time, got used to being a little more lazy, got used to my job being pretty boring. 

So am I afraid of going back to normal? Of having to re-teach myself how to live like a normal person? To have a life, to date, to go shopping? Is that it? 

Or is some subconscious fear that this job - this potential move to Missoula - would be the last one? That I would settle there? That that is where I will stay? 

Maybe I'm not afraid of moving. I'm afraid of staying. In my mind, Fort Stockton = temporary. It's safe. It was never really meant to be permanent - I never even considered the notion that I would stay here forever - and if I stay here for now, there's never any pressure to put down any roots. But I won't have an excuse if I go to Montana. It would be the culmination of a dream, the crowning achievement of my wildlife career, to be able to live in a beautiful place and study wildlife species I actually like. Plus, it pays 30% more. 

But I would have to stay. For the first time in my life, it wouldn't be temporary.

I would have to buy Montana license plates. Get a Montana driver's license (I have had TX plates and a TX license since I got my car/license, despite all my moves). I would buy a Montana house.

I would become a Montanan.

I have never, ever, felt like I belonged to a place. When people ask me where I'm from, I honestly don't have an answer for them. I am not a Texan, though I live in Texas. I am not an Arizonan, though I grew up there. I am not an Idahoan, though I went to college there. I am not a Missourian, though I spent three years there. Lack of identity was my identity.

Well, that would change.

I am a nomad. That is my identity. I am so freaking scared of having to create a new one.

And part of me is hoping they don't offer the job. 

Of course, of course I would take it if they offered it to me. Of course. But if that happens, I know it would be the scariest thing I've ever done. And I've done some pretty scary things.

The human brain is so messed up.

Thinking about this a little more, I'm wondering now if this is just the normal reaction to moving and change. I suppose most people are scared. But I never have been before; change has always been so easy and, in some cases, preferable to stasis. Something's different now. Furniture. True friends, perhaps. A team of coworkers I actually like. Damn it; I got attached to a place I hate. How did I let that happen?