Going Home

Sometimes the simplest questions can be the hardest to answer.

What do you want for dinner?       What's your favorite song?      How are you doing today?

and for me this weekend...  How do you like Florida?

Now for anyone out there that does not know I lived in Las Vegas for 5+ years and moved to Florida last November.

I was a bridesmaid for one of my good friends this weekend in Las Vegas. I became close with this special friend through the design firm that we both worked for. We worked on a job together for over four years, she being my project manager and I being the Interior Designer on the project. We bonded. She is fabulous. You might remember her from this post where we trained and ran a 1/2 marathon together.

So needless to say there were many friends at this wedding that are former co-workers of mine as well as just friends and acquaintances from my time living in Vegas. And of course the question that I was asked over and over again...

How do you like Florida?

So I tried to answer as honestly as possible.

"You know, it is different"     "Its good"    "I really enjoy being close to family"

All of it seemed to fall short of being able to clearly explain how I feel about Florida. I do like living in Florida, but I also miss almost everyone that I was speaking to and I was having an inner battle of emotions.  I started to get kinda bummed when I thought of them all still working together or at least still working in the Las Vegas fun, fast paced design industry.

Plus this was the first time since moving that I felt decidedly on "the outside". These used to be my peeps! The distance was starting to show.

So anyway that brings me back to another hard question for me. Where is Home? For me Home is always Texas. It took me a long time for Vegas to be Home. And now it was strange leaving Vegas and saying I am going Home to Florida.

I feel like that guy on Sister Wives who doesn't have his own bedroom and just rotates between his 4 wives rooms. (Okay I don't really feel exactly like that but I love that show, so interesting!)

So how do I feel about Florida? I think time has still not answered that question. I feel like there are things to be accomplished, opportunities to be taken advantage of, and friends still to be made. I do like being close to family. I still wish that Dallas was only an hour away so that I could be close to my mom and my brother and his family but, yeah that isn't going to happen. I do miss Las Vegas though. I thought I was so ready to leave but now that I am gone I realize all of the things that I miss.

It was a bittersweet trip. The sweet was this...

The bitter was realizing that Home is a hard to define. That it always isn't one place. That with the people that you used to share everyday conversations you are trying to sum up the last year of your life and it is harder than you ever imagined.

So where do you call Home? Is it hard for you to define?