Most of us have moved at one point in our lives.
As a kid we hopped around every 4 years. Slowly working our way out of Florida and coming to rest in Atlanta when I was 11. It was something that I didn’t mind as a kid. There’s not much I really ever minded as a kid. So when we arrived in Atlanta I was pretty sure that it would happen again around my 15-16 birthday, thanks to my Father however, that didn’t happen. His job was once again pushing for a transfer out of state, and instead of being away from his family all week long and only home on the weekends…he took a demotion, and we stayed in Atlanta.
When I was barely nineteen I did a little moving of my own and went to serve a mission in Guatemala for 2 years and once again…constant relocation every 3-4 months. Now you’d think that all this moving would have taught me some sort of objectivity. That the way I would have looked at friends and at people in general would be one of…well…a transient nature at best, if not all together unimportant. You’d think that I’d come to rely on my family and that our relationships would have been the strongest ones that I would cherish the most. All the moving and leaving and starting over seems to lend itself to that type of behavior in my opinion. When in fact the opposite happened to me. My family isn’t that close for unknown reasons, maybe they just aren’t as close as I’d like them to be. Atlanta was the first place that I did it without realizing, but my friends became my Friends and then my Family. The way I felt a family should be. Strange thing is that when I returned from my mission in 2002 I didn’t stay with them but had another move set out on my horizon. One that would lead me away from my Friends, (capitalizaion important) to Utah for college. Leaving everyone I’d ever known…again…to strike out on my own. Maybe it was something I needed to prove to myself.?
For anyone who doesn’t know…Utah is like the Mecca of mormon college kids. I’m a man of quiet religion most times so Utah wasn’t my first choice…to go head long into an atmosphere that I knew would be saturated by religion and tint everything that it could. However I made my decision and that’s where it took me. So for the past, almost 6 years now, I’ve been there.
I started out going to BYU getting A’s like I always had in school…but I never enjoyed it. What’s worse, I knew that I didn’t. For my Friends back home it was something I’m sure that every one of them at one time or another passed off as some sort of fanaticism. They couldn’t see, and I couldn’t tell them, any reason why I was still there. Frustrations grew, depression set in, and for a period of 2 years at least…I was an absolute loss. At one point things were so bad that only one part of me was as I remembered. I like to call it determination. Some would call it stubbornness. They’d probably be more correct. Even the way that I was previously stubborn had changed when I think about it. Before, it kept me pushing to make myself a better person, but by this point it had turned to be something that just kept me breathing, scrapping with anyone and anything that pressed pushed bumped or jostled that last thing I was holding onto with all I had left.
My personality had completely changed. I was no longer the person I had always been, the person I enjoyed being. I became someone who lived on the cusp of anger. The slightest thing would flip the switch. It was silly, I knew it was but I let it take root in me. I know that there are plenty of people who would classify me as an Angry person b/c of those times, and they wouldn’t be wrong, and I don’t hold anything against them for thinking so.
So there I was, being stubborn, being miserable, and making a ton of other people miserable along with me…and I knew it. I hated myself for it, and in my mind I wouldn’t leave Utah with my proverbial tail between my legs. I wouldn’t give up, tell myself I couldn’t hack it, that I couldn’t be who I always was in my new, and oh sooo difficult for me, environment. SO….I stayed, for another 3 years.
I’m not so foolish as to think it was anything other than a matter of pride. I did however fool myself into thinking that I wouldn’t be beaten, that I wouldn’t give up and all that bull shit. Truth be told, I already was, and I already had been. I just didn’t want to give up and leave in pieces for fear of what part of me I might leave behind and never find again.
There’s no way I could have made it through those years without the friends that I made. Even though most of the time it was them that I was making miserable along with me, I couldn’t have done it without them. Couldn’t…and didn’t. I have mostly them to thank for the condition I find myself in now, 6 years later, once again in Georgia. There are many who contributed of course, and in no way do I want to diminish our relationships by making special mention of one and not another. I do however want to make special mention of 2. The 2 that got it started.
They don’t know this, but Jeremy and Bethia provided a haven for me. Their home, their friendship, and acceptance when I didn’t turn out to be the easiest person to know and love…was the first warmth I’d felt in years. I needed it more than I’d ever felt the need for anything before. More than I needed any other Love I’d ever known. More than I needed my music. More than anything. Which, comically to me and I’m sure annoying to them, is why I was over at their house for everyday for 2 years straight. Sorry guys. And if they never understood why no matter what happened I always stood beside them, well if they read this, then they do now. What they gave to me I couldn’t have made it through that point in my life without. They made me miss…being me, if that makes sense. I just can’t think of any other way to say it. They are what turned me around. Though it might not have been so big a thing to them at the time, it was everything to me.
I make particular mention of Jeremy and Bethia now b/c I know they won’t mind me embarrassing them just a bit. I owe where I am in my life to them and their friendships. They took the pressure off so I could crawl out from under the truck I was pinned beneath.
Today, they are a big part of the family I’ve been building my entire life. One lives in New York, some in Utah, one in Washington, a lot in Atlanta, and a few down in Guatemala but they ALL are never far from my thoughts. This is my family. No matter how much time passes or whatever happens all these people are the ones that love and when see one another again we’ll fall right back in step, like we saw each other yesterday. We aren’t bound by geography, religion, by taste in movies, or anything else most people could tag their connection to others by…but I will always be there for them, and they will always be there for me.
I would say my family is a strange one, It’s perfect.
Dave Rogers
Also….for those of you who are wondering why the sudden move back to Atlanta? after 6 years… seriously? What gives?
The silliest connection just came to mind so I’m rollin’ with it. Everyone knows that Dorothy always had the power to come home, she just had to believe in herself enough to do it and her experiences in OZ are what made that possible. There are all sort of applicable implications that come with this comparison. The most comical of which are that Utah IS the Land of OZ, I’m Dorothy, Tess has always been my ruby slippers, and Sydney is Toto. I could weep and laugh over this comparison all day.
I love you guys.
Dave