The Road to Nowhere

The three-year anniversary of my move to the small southern town in which I live recently passed. People have frequently asked me how I ended up in this town. They are particularly puzzled at the fact that I live here once they learn that I left Sydney, Australia, hopped on a plane, and zoomed 14,000 miles across the globe to take up residence here. "Why on earth ...?" they ask, their faces scrunched into a prune of an expression.

Why, indeed.

Let us invoke a well-worn cliché, shall we? The Road of Life. She is long, she is sinuous, she has many surprises in store for us. My road has brought me here. But I don't really regret it. Why? you gasp. Because at the end of that long, sinuous road lay Freedom. Not in some ridiculously nationalistic and oh-so-typically American sense of the word, but in the deeply personal sense. I chose the dregs as a way of getting back to basics, of being myself again. Ah, sweet freedom.

I have celebrated many firsts since my arrival here. Recently I purchased my first computer. I also got my first cellular phone. Last year I paid for my own vacation completely by myself for the first time in my life.

There seems to be a little pattern emerging: this freedom of which I spoke seems to be a financial one, doesn't it? But it's more than that. It's the freedom to be myself at any moment, without apology, without self-consciousness, without remorse. I like who I am becoming, the me that I am re-discovering. And doing this all on my own, with no friends near, has been difficult, but well worth it.