Seven Hundred and Thirty Days in Omaha

Two years ago today, I closed on my house here in Omaha....

This morning, I sat on the front porch and thought about how much has happened to me in the past two years --- it seems impossible that so much could have happened in what feels like such a short period of time.

Two years ago -- I was still working for Teen People... Pulp was just this fuzzy idea in my head, scribbled notes in my journal. I was so excited about coming back here -- but secretly terrified that it would be just like the two years I had spent here before -- I'd just bought a house in a town I had literally fled from two years earlier.

My past two years have been nothing like those first two.... and exactly like those first two... all at the same time, which doesn't seem possible, but it's true. I have grown by leaps and bounds in the past 24 months. Buying that house by myself, opening the shop, the play.... I've accomplished things that I never thought I would be able to do. Omaha has been good to me this go 'round. It's brought some great people into my life, given me the space and time and opportunity to make some wonderful things happen... I have been thriving in so many ways. It's been better than I ever imagined it could be.

But.... at the same time, the things that made it hard for me to be here before are still on the table. I've been ignoring them -- pretending that they don't matter as much as they do. I would be lying if I said that those things haven't been feeling bigger, getting louder -- demanding to be dealt with. I am sacrificing a lot to stay in Omaha... I'm reaching a point where I need to sort out if those sacrifices are really worth making.

I've been working on this project for the Bemis Center's Creativity Festival (Go!) -- helping to create a labyrinth on the 5th floor of their building. My "station" is about love -- and focuses on where our hearts REALLY lie. We live where we live -- but often times, our hearts live elsewhere. Anyways --- while working on this project, I realized that, honestly --- my heart IS in Omaha. Not only that -- it's been here for decades.... since my summers spent here with Maria as a teenager. It's my head that's elsewhere -- common sense telling me that I need to be in another city, a bigger city. I have ALWAYS been one to follow my heart -- which, I realize today, is why I keep coming back to this city... as a child and as an adult... it calls me back.

My heart is very much here right now. Wrapped tightly around a man who's heart is split in two... someone I may never get to be with -- but who will always be a part of my life.... no matter what. Wrapped around my store and gallery, the community it supports and that supports it. And my home -- my leaky, creaky, money pit of an old house that I've been nursing back to health bit by bit since we met two years ago in May at the stroke of the noon bells tolling at St. Cecelia's.

I have always loved Omaha. I have always grown here -- even when it felt like hell, I was learning from being here. It's a fragile love... one that I've realized that I need to take day by day, year by year. I cannot promise to be here ten years from now or five years from now. I'm not sure I can promise to be here two years from now ----- and that's okay, it's how we roll with each other.

I do believe that this next 12 months will be pivotal ones in our relationship though. There's a lot on the table right now... and I'm realizing, that as with all torrid love affairs -- sometimes you need to know when to say when. I do know that if I ever decide to leave Omaha behind me again -- whether it's ten or five or two years from now -- it will be the last time. I believe I still have lessons to learn from this city, things to do here and adventures to have here... but I also know that I need some things that this city might not ever be able to give me.... and I know that when the time comes for me to go after those things -- I'll have to..... go.

But we don't have to dwell on those bits just now.

Right now, I feel like relishing how much I've grown and accomplished in these two years with Omaha... how amazing my lil' life here has been, how proud I am of every bit of it.

Right now, I feel like celebrating.