Today, I surrendered my drivers license for WI. I've felt disillusioned since doing so...see, I'm in no man's land. We aren't within driving distance of our friends, rather the chasm of 15 hour drives looms large. The familiarity is gone. Handing over the license felt like handing over part of myself. I feel like the piece of paper that was handed to me today in lieu of receiving a new license. I don't have license from WI and I haven't received a new official license from TX. I'm somewhere in the murky middle. That's an appropriate picture of our lives in transition.
We knew uprooting would be a challenge. Even though we were certain of our call, it doesn't make the transition easier. Two and a half months ago, we packed up all of our things from the only place my husband and I had lived together and where our kids had grown up. We had friends, we had a church, we knew where things were...we had doctors, chiropractors, people we trusted to fix cars or knew who to call when certain life things happen. And just like that, it's gone.
We felt the duress of not knowing our way around and not having friends to invite over first. We took wrong ways, got charged for tolls and fines once we got on roads we couldn't get off of. We tried different grocery stores and just had to take drives around to look around. When it was only our family unit, with not much in terms of friends for them or for us, we've felt it. Our home is the only place that feels truly stable in our world to me. We missed the people we had a history with, who knew our stories and had seen us through so much. We have had to traverse the roads of finding new "go to places" for things, but those are the logistics that feel manageable to me...
It's the lack of the social circle that I once had that at times feels crushing.
It's this haunting feeling still for me that...no one knows me. I get scared that I'm making wrong impressions because I'm fearing my insecurities are oozing out. To be honest, I don't feel much like myself. I feel like I'm unpleasant to be around much more often than I used to for those I live with. I had friends to vent to, ways to get out and not have to lean SO heavily on solely people at home. ,I miss the people I could reach out to who knew that sometimes when I'm stressed I talk way too much or sometimes I might clam up and just do what's asked...not because I'm okay but because I'm not. There's no one here who can look at me and say, "You alright? You don't look like yourself or are acting like yourself?" The sting of that feeling that no one knows me to know the difference returns. While I've always been social and have no trouble making acquaintances (my husband jokes that I could swing a cat in any direction and hit a friend), however, I don't feel that way here. It's strange to not feel connected and not feel known. I wish I had friends I could ask to coffee or something, I just...I don't know...I feel lost. It's painful.
My friends from back home still love me, but their lives keep moving too...as does ours. I'm not their go-to person anymore now either, because I can't be. It's not being an hour or two away here, it's a whole country that separates us. So, I don't fit there...and wrestle with that I don't fit here either.
I know it won't last forever. Eventually I will make friends and years from now, we will have a history. It's hard right now, holding a paper copy of what will be an official license in TX eventually. I feel that paper represents how life is right now. I'm not back in WI and yet I'm not official here. It will take time, I know. Eventually the proverbial "official license" will come. As for now, I have to accept that I feel very much like a temporary license, and holding on to Jesus as I walk the road here he has asked us to walk...someday, I will feel more "official" here. But today is not that day. Thanks for listening.
