Inner Turmoil

"A true friend is someone who thinks you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." - Bernard Meltzer

I just got done looking through the scrapbook Krista made for me. I will admit that I teared up a bit. Although I generally appriciate my friends, I feel like I sometimes forget just how much I love them and need them in my life. So thank you to my friends for being so fabulous! I was going to get a bit more mushy but then I decided to hold that in for another time.

I have been having some inner turmoil lately dealing with being happy. I (usually) love my life in Mapleton. When I first came here I was very scared to be on my own and now I am really glad that this is the small town I ended up in. I feel like I am a different person here than I normally am. Not in a bad way, but just different. When I'm here I have to be a grown up and do my own thing. I have no one to depend on but myself. I'm also at a school that has an excellent staff. Overall, the kids are pretty good too. I have made some great friends here and there's a fun group of younger people to hang out with. When people visit they may not understand why I like living in a small town, but for some reason I love being in a town that pretty much has nothing in it. Maybe it helps me appreciate doing other things in bigger cities? So overall I am quite happy in Mapleton. The only problem is it's location in comparison to most of my friends. Here is where the turmoil lies. I would love to live closer to Des Moines to be a little more centrally located, but at the same time there is no guarantee that I'd end up in such a great little town. I do not want to live in the city and I do not want to teach in the city. I just don't know where I see my life going at this point....

I have always had this gift for making amazing friends and right now is when it's seeming like it's not as good a gift as I thought. I can't be near all of my friends. No matter where I live I will be far away from some of them. What's worse is that I just keep making more friends. I wouldn't say I'm adding on tons of new people, but the newest ones are just as special as the ones I've known since kindergarten. I would love to be able to see everyone every day, but that's never going to work out.

So far I have figured nothing out, but rambled about a lot of things...my analyzing never seems to work!