habitat

Leaving Lawrence was hard, although harder in the imagining than in the doing. When the time came, after the packing and the re-packing and the farewell dinners and errands and tears, I got in the car and headed west. That morning, I did many of the things that were fundamental to my daily routine in Lawrence: I went to Checkers, I walked on Mass Street, I got money out of my local bank. For an occasion that seemed so monumental in my mind, though, these one-last-time events seemed almost as ordinary as they had the week before, somehow strangely lacking in significance.

I dearly love Lawrence, and it was hard to leave, but not necessarily in the ways I’d thought. I miss individual friends, of course, but also the established texture of social life, the patterns, the hangouts, the friend to call for coffee on a Wednesday afternoon and the one for a Saturday morning run. Along with social space, I miss the familiar routines of place, the personal landmarks and learned shortcuts, all the accumulated knowledge of twelve years of inhabiting a place. The way the social and the spatial overlap.

Lawrence is home, but living there felt like unfinished business. Leaving was necessary, but limbo still feels a little daunting.