Written on 9.20.11:
When I moved in with Justin in January of 2010, I thought Durham was the most amazing place to live, ever. And in all honesty, it had nothing to do with Durham. Every bit of it had to do with my love for Justin. If Justin had gotten a job and moved to Canada, or Timbuktu, I would have thought those were great places to live, too. But as it turns out, he got a job at Duke and moved to Durham. January of that year was a very exciting time in my life. I think it was the second time I have felt that sure about myself. (The first was graduating from junior college in 2007.)
As of January in 2010 (almost two years ago, wow!), I had just graduated college with a bachelors degree, had gotten engaged and was planning my dream wedding, had just returned from a wedding festival where I won a free honeymoon, and was preparing to move in with the love of my life, away from my parents. Life seemed so simple, and so easy to do then. Graduating college? Check. Getting married? Working on it. Becoming a housewife? Close! I mean, I pretty much had no worries. My student loans wouldn't come into effect for another 6 months, and I was absolutely certain that I would have a job by then. It seriously didn't even cross my mind that I couldn't get a job, or that it would be difficult. I wasn't even thinking of applying to work anywhere, because I was taking the first few months "off" from working. That's how confident I was.
Stuff got hard.
I moved in with Justin, and that was fine. As can be expected, no matter how long you've been together, when you decide to move in with someone, you learn things about them that maybe you didn't know or didn't want to know, and vice-versa. We had fights, and there were nights where I cried and wanted nothing more than to move back in with my mom. But eventually, that feeling passed and our life together began to get a routine. Because I wasn't working, and because we only had one car, I drove Justin to work every morning, and hung out in the apartment alone. The furthest I ever went was the grocery store (which I walked to), and to pick Justin up from work. Then I made dinner, he played WoW and I watched TV (we had satellite then) or surfed the Web. I usually fell asleep first, on the couch (still do), and when he got tired, he would wake me up and walk me to the bed where we would then go to sleep. Rinse, repeat.
As those first few months went on, however, I began to develop a very serious, though somewhat minor, depression. I sat in the apartment all day, watching movies or TV, and talked to my mom on the phone as often as possible, because she worked a day job then, too. I missed the hell out of my mom, and it upset me that I lived so far away. I know I could have lived further than 4 hours away, but this was (and is) the farthest I've ever lived from home, and it was hitting me pretty hard. I missed Spartanburg. I missed knowing where everything was, and my friends, and the places to eat and the movie theater. I began longing for Spartanburg. Durham was suddenly horrible. It was the worst place on Earth to be, and I couldn't stand it. I blamed Durham for taking me away from my family and my friends, and things I was familiar with.
The apartment Justin and I lived in suddenly became a drastically different picture than the sunshine-y, bright, loving place it had been when I moved into it. Our kitchen, and accordingly the other rooms sometimes, had roaches in it. Bad. They were everywhere. They scaled the walls and the floor. It was absolutely, and on all accounts, disgusting. We had the apartment sprayed several times, and we even learned that the bug issue had taken over our entire building, so they had to evacuate the building for a day to fumigate it. Nothing worked. As pop culture will tell you, those damn things will survive the apocalypse. This is what depressed me more than anything else, knowing that we were forced to live in a place where the most disgusting creatures on Earth crawled on everything we owned. I can remember sitting on the couch, staring at the kitchen from the living room and being incredibly petrified to walk in there because I might see one. I avoided the kitchen as much as possible. I could just see the episode of Twilight Zone where the man with the roach phobia gets eaten alive by them as they come out of the walls come true in my living room.
I became a recluse, and refused to leave the apartment for any reason other than to go to the grocery store or take and pick up Justin from work. I kept the blinds closed and became frightened of our ghetto neighborhood. (When Justin moved in, unbeknownst to him, there was bullet hole in the window of the bedroom.) Realizing how bad the neighborhood we now had to live in for the next 6 months was, I became even more of a recluse because it scared me to go out into the community of odd and scary people.
And so that was my life from February to June of 2010. I don't guess that's a terribly long time to be depressed, but having never been depressed, it was long for me. After June, we moved out of the hellhole apartment and into the much nicer and cleaner and better upgrade of an apartment that we currently live in. But even after the move, I still didn't like Durham. I sat in the new apartment, same as before, watching movies or TV, and not doing anything. Not being able to find work really weighed on me as well because I felt like I wasn't contributing.
Durham became my go-to for resting blame on. Everything bad that happened was because we lived in Durham.
Then came July of 2011.
My mother came to visit us for a week, and while she was here, she and I rode around the downtown area a lot, a part of Durham I didn't have a lot of experience with. That week really opened my eyes to Durham, and helped me see things I could love about it.
Downtown Durham changed everything. I had a can't-beat-'em-join-'em epiphany.
Durham doesn't necessarily rule over Spartanburg, but now I can call both places home and feel all right about it.
I feel like I've gone through the Kübler-Ross equivalent of Durham.
- Denial. It's not so bad living here, it could be worse!
- Anger. Dammit, Durham, you suck! I want to go home!
- Bargaining. Okay, if I can go home every two weeks, maybe I can stand Durham more. Small doses.
- Depression. I wish I didn't have to live here. I'd rather live anywhere but here.
- Acceptance. Well, this isn't so bad. I can love both home towns equally.
Written 10.30.12:
Looking back on all this, it makes me so sad to think back on those few months I was so depressed.
Even now, I'll admit I don't really get out as much as I should, but I'm in no way as much of a hermit as I was then. I'm no longer afraid. I get out in the morning or afternoons and run now. Justin and I go on adventures together to see the little spots of Durham we haven't seen yet. I've accepted this town as where I live; it's not weird anymore to put 27705 as my zip code and not 29301. I've almost completely acclimated. Some things about Durham still give me the creeps, though. The homeless population here is the worst I've ever seen. They're also pushy! The parts of Durham (and Raleigh, for that matter) that are ghetto, are really ghetto. They're scary. I also still miss Spartanburg like crazy sometimes. I get excited to go home and visit my friends and see the familiar places that made up home for me for 23 years. But I like coming back to Durham now, too. Durham is the familiar place for me now. It's so weird the turn my hatred for Durham has taken over the last two (almost three!) years. And all it took was that one weekend from my mother to change everything. But then again, she always fixes everything. :)
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