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Leaving my childhood home after getting married.
One of my least favorite goodbyes. 

Over the last ten years, I’ve had 16 different addresses in 7 different states and 10 different cities. Having been literally born in my childhood home and raised there until age 18, those statistics are outrageous.

When I first left home to go to college in Utah, I had a boyfriend who did not join me. We did the long-distance thing and were (in hindsight, unhealthily) attached to one another, so I spent the better part of my first semester depressed and pining for home. I didn’t bother to make friends, especially after deciding that I would never come back to Utah. Why make friends if you’re just going to have to say goodbye in a few months?

And that was my approach to the next five addresses: Don’t bother making friends. You’ll just have to say goodbye, and goodbyes are the worst.

While in my travel study program at BYU-Nauvoo, I grew close to a small few, but not by my own doing. They befriended, included, and loved me. I struggled to reciprocate because I knew I would have to say goodbye in four months. I cried unattractively and hard while hugging them goodbye, so they wore me down (and we're still friends today), but I can’t say I really enjoyed much that semester. I just wanted to be home. 

After the break-up of the century (in hindsight, thank goodness!), I moved to Rexburg to try out a different BYU. This time, I stayed an entire eight months, but still only opened up to a few. Social life was a distraction from homework and sleeping, and though newly single, I was pretty arrogant and didn’t need “a man” to be happy. (I wasn’t particularly happy without one, either.) Plus, goodbyes are the worst, and I didn’t want to bother.

Our first apartment in Rexburg.

It wasn’t until I was a missionary in Ohio that I started to change my thinking. I knew that I would move around periodically and fellow missionaries would go home, so, goodbyes were inevitable. But, I also knew that not actively making friends made me kind of miserable. I carried so many regrets about college, so I decided to experiment and see what would happen if I treated my time in Ohio as if I was going to stay there forever, as if it were my home.

I started loving people. With genuine, whole-hearted, I’m-going-to-hug-you-even-though-I-don’t-know-you kind of love. The goodbyes were excruciating, but they were meaningful. Everything I did was meaningful. Everything that happened deserved a page in my journal. Did I have crazy anxiety and want to come home by the end? Absolutely. But, when I did come home, I was grateful for the experience rather than regretful.

Tyler and I lived in Las Vegas for the past five months for student teaching. We didn’t know whether we’d be staying for a job or moving to one of the 20 places where he applied, so I decided to make that weird city my home. And, my goodness, I fell in love with that weird city. With the thrift stores and homeless people that dotted every corner, with the palm trees and the fact that we were minorities in our neighborhood, and I fell in love, especially, with the people, my new friends, at church.

Saying goodbye to our second Las Vegas home.

But, alas, we got a summer job in Seattle, and again, I had  to say goodbye. I cried, unattractively and hard, through all three hours of our last Sunday. And I’m crying unattractively and hard right now. But I would do it all again, even if I knew beforehand that I’d be saying goodbye a few months later. I’m not exactly sure how to put into words why it’s so important to jump in completely and invest time in creating relationships except: there’s a richness in a life that’s filled with people you love and have loved. And “home” becomes not just the place that you visit at Christmas, but wherever you are.

Four hours into our drive to Seattle, Tyler was offered and accepted a teaching job in Idaho Falls. So, I’ll add at least one more address and city to my stats before the end of the year. And while that means more goodbyes, I’m going to bother making friends and call Seattle home.