Oklahoma :( Edition

Thanks for all of your support and well wishes! It kind of makes me feel bad to go on complaining about Oklahoma, but if I can't discuss my fears/complaints on my blog, what's the point?

I didn't use to have strong feelings about Oklahoma. And then I met Zach. Zach moved to Oklahoma in the middle of High School and hates that place like only an irrational teenager yanked away from all his friends and home can. He took summer school classes to graduate a year early so he could get out of dodge, and even almost 10 years latter I don't think he's quite forgiven the entire state. For years we would make jokes about Oklahoma. It's not really an actual place to me, just where hopes and dreams go to die in a flat pile of dirt and football.

And now we're going back. And I'm very nervous? apprehensive?

The easiest and most vaguely concrete thing to grumble about is all the things that aren't there that I've gotten spoiled by in DC. It's really nice being able to just go, eh, I'm bored, lets go to a free museum or walk around and look at giant monuments or pretty houses or explore a new neighborhood or any one of the million easily accessible things here. Oklahoma has a cowboy museum. I've heard it's ok.

Not just fun things, but even stores that I think of as being normal, or have enjoyed window shopping in. I like meandering around Filene's Basement or Anthropologie if I'm feeling fancy and picking up produce from Whole Foods. Oklahoma doesn't even have Costco.

However, while we certainly can do all those fun things here, most of the time we are boring homebodies. Most of the time I browse the internet. We can probably do that in Oklahoma.

I'm also a little concerned about being so close to his family. We'll be living with his parents this summer, and will probably stay in the same town, as that's where the University is. I genuinely like Zach's parents. They're not only good people, but they make a real effort to be good parents and good in-laws. I know that they try to be supportive and loving and not controlling at all.

I'm still nervous. I don't quite know how things are supposed to be living so close to family as a married couple. And while they aren't pushy, they are people, and they do have opinions. Mostly, I worry about how this will change the dynamic of our relationship. I worry about Zach changing or reverting, or us being pulled in different directions, or some sort of subtle 3 against 1. I know that they are my family too, but it mostly feels like my family is mine, Zach's is his, and we're a whole new and separate thing. That's pretty much how things have worked long distance, and I just don't know how things will work all in one place and I'm not looking forward to a baptism by fire of moving into one house right away.

Family fears are just one part of my general, overarching screaming panic. I'm afraid that we just won't fit. I understand things here. We have a routine and a life and it's the only one I've really known since being married and I like it. And I feel like that's all going away all at once.

I worry about me being able to find a job. I worry about finding friends, or always feeling like weird outsiders. I worry about us and our lives and every little thing just not fitting, because nothing about how I think of Oklahoma feels remotely like me or like home. I've always lived in someplace that had something familiar. I grew up in Oregon, so the whole NW feels like part of my soul. Utah was odd, but having grown up Mormon it was just a super-sized version of the Church culture I already knew. DC was different, but I had already tried it for a safety run when I did a semester internship in undergrad.

Nothing about Oklahoma feels that way. It is a Red Cowboy Football Oil Rural Southern/vaguely Texan fly-over state, and I'm a super liberal coastal elitist snob. I'm not so sure I beleive in great big American culture wars, but if I did me and my stereotyped version of Oklahoma would be on opposite sides of the spectrum.

It's not the different I'm afraid of, it's the idea that we'll never fit and this will never feel like home. I don't want to spend 3-5 years as a fish out of water, gasping for air.

I'm sure it will be fine. Awkward at first, but then things will slide into place and by the time we're ready to move, I'll be writing another post about how I can't stand the thought of leaving my home. It's just that right now I can't imagine how that could possibly happen.