always, always, always going to be an idaho gal

there's something about idaho.

let me make it very clear: my loyalty and love for idaho has no bounds. it is limitless and it will never be lessened or weakened. 

but let me make something else very clear. i can't live there anymore or ever again. and nothing makes me quite so happy as leaving after i've been here for a couple days. that's it, ladies and gentlemen. my idaho limit is all of 48 hours. but simultaneously, nothing makes me happier than the two days i am there that i drive on the same roads i drove on when i was 17 and falling in love for the first time, have coffee with my sister in the coffee shop i did homework my senior year when bribing myself with pastries was the only way to get anything done, sleep in the comfort of the house i can remember walking through when i was in second grade before my parents decided to buy it, and see the mountain that has watched over our little town for the eighteen years i lived there. i swear, there are a dozen memories for every square foot of moscow. every place has its meaning there. every place holds some sort of fragment of myself that would later be pieced together to define me when i packed my 47 scarves and DSLR for montana. i love remembering (hence, blogging). i love returning to the person i was who lived there for eighteen years and in that way, it's timeless. time stops there. 

and that's why, too, as soon as i've seen those fragments face to face, i'm able to see those parts of myself clearly and remember my reasons for leaving. i leave feeling invigorated and renewed. i know why i'm meant to leave, so i can do something more and be something more than i could be there. i know i've gotten all i could get from home and it's time i attach memories to new streets, corners, and park benches as i've done in missoula. and that's why at the end of last summer i knew in the back of my mind i wouldn't be coming back for an extended period of time again for a while. i knew that the following summer, i had to do something different. i had to expand my love for idaho elsewhere and see where it could get me. even if it meant making someone coffee or washing dishes in another lab somewhere else, i knew i just couldn't do it there. 

and so this winter, i did it! and as of last week, i succeeded. after applying to dozens of internships, abusing every connection and resource i had, getting rejected so many times it started to feel like i wasn't meant to get out at all, i was offered an amazing opportunity to intern in seattle this summer.

that's my news. I AM LIVING IN SEATTLE THIS SUMMER. with an internship, house to sit, commute to the city every day, and a completely new and different place to explore and let those fragments wander. 

but as i left idaho this weekend, knowing what i know now and that my visits here are just going to be visits from here on out, i wasn't as happy to leave as i was before. nostalgic, even. because even though moscow never ever changes, it's the person you are that does. and as much as i can see the old parts of myself there, i know they're meant to be in the past. i don't need to remember that person anymore because as i said, they're just a part of me now. it doesn't feel like i'm torn between places i've lived and called home anymore, it feels like i'm whole and have the pieces with me that i've picked up wherever i go. i'm always going to be an idaho girl through and through, wheat field lover and small town adorer, but that doesn't mean that i can't be an idaho girl and nothing else. it's time for something different. it's time for some change, even if it's only barely a start.