a love letter to Georgia

I'm going to admit something to you that most people probably don't know about me: I am not a Georgia native. Technically, I was born in Jacksonville, FL and I lived there for the first two years of my life. Do I remember it? Not a bit, really. The last time I lived there, I looked like this:

Adorable, right?

We moved to Georgia in the early 90's, before I even started elementary school. Growing up, I lived in a wide variety of houses. We settled in a small town called Snellville, your quintessential suburban oasis, complete with picturesque parks, a multitude of neighborhoods, and two main roads that cross each other at the center. Our first Georgia home was a townhouse, located at the end of a cul-de-sac. Our neighbors used to babysit me occasionally and feed me frozen dinners, and my first 'best friend' lived just up the road. That townhouse, I first learned to play pretend in that front yard, imagining I, too, was Belle from my favorite Disney movie, sitting in the patch of dandelions by the driveway. I shared a room with my older sister, and believed strongly that either David Bowie's Jareth or that the Wicked Witch of the West lived in my closet, waiting to strike as soon as the lamp was turned off. It was the first place I saw snow, the first place I learned to ride a bike at, and the first place I made friends. That townhouse are where my first memories came from of Georgia.

From there, my parents bought a much larger house down the way, with an enormous backyard ready for my imagination to take over. That house on Oak Grove Lane was where I grew up. I went to school from that house for the first time. I spent the best Christmas as a child in that house, the one we videoed that we still, twenty years later, reference at Thanksgivings and Christmases. That house I had my own room for the first time, sang into my hairbrush handle various Spice Girl songs, and tried to crash all of my sister's birthday parties because I thought she was the most amazing person in the world to me (I still kind of think that, seester). Oddly enough, that is also the house I saw the whirlwind spin-out of my parents getting divorced. It both holds the best and worst memories of my childhood at that house, the exceptional mark of the parade of time moving from child to teenager.

Following that house on Oak Grove Lane, we bounced around a bit. My mom, bless her, was a single mom again and this time had two children to worry about, though my sister was hardly a child at that point. The three of us depended on each other and banded together to accomplish the impossible. Those years were not always full of plenty, but we got by and thrived on the love we had as a family, which often made all of our cups spill over. Those years are what I feel are a testament to my character as an adult, crafting my resilience to carry on no matter what, making the present as joyful as possible, and sculpting the idea of working hard to achieve the things I've wanted.

After the various moves and numerous boxes and collective houses we have made home, I left them all to go to college. I am the first woman in my immediate family to have gone away to university, lived in a dorm, experienced campus living, and come away from it, granted eight years later, with a Bachelor's degree. I was always raised to believe that college was the goal, but more than that, that whatever I wanted to do with my life, I could do it. Anything I wanted to accomplish, anyone I wanted to be... I could do and be and have, I've never stopped being grateful for that. 

[Sidenote: I'll admit, college wasn't an easy course for me. I absolutely adore learning, but I loathe and detest feeling like I have to validate myself with testing. I enjoy so much about the academic sphere, yet the technicalities that seem to cloud it have always annoyed me.]

But this is a love letter to Georgia, my home state for my whole life. And it would be amiss if I didn't talk about my love for the Peach State. Georgia is all I've known to live in. I've never known or remembered living anywhere else that didn't include a drive down 285, 85, 75, or 400. I've never lived farther than an hour from my family. All I've known are summers at Lake Lanier and Stone Mountain, getting sunburnt and watching laser shows and fireworks. King of Pops while walking in Little Five Points, fighting the intense humidity any way possible.  Mild winters and gorgeous autumns, complete with our annual trip to the pumpkin patch and apple orchard in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

For the majority of my life, I've gotten to call the suburbs of Atlanta my home. While I'm no stranger to being able to just pick up and go [see every time I moved in college and that time I said, I'm studying abroad in London and actually made it happen], this is the first time I've moved to another state, outside of my comfort zone. I'm definitely excited about it, but I'm going to miss it here at home. Even the traffic, which is abhorrent. This place will always be home.

And I know we will do our best to make North Carolina our home for the next few years as well.

I love you, Georgia. I'll see you soon.