I came to an interesting realization when I was up in Maine for a vacation: I don’t love Maine as much as I thought I did.<\/p>\n
I love the ocean, the mountains, the general laid-back feel of the place. I’m quite proud of being a Mainer. But every time I go back I can’t help feeling some of the bad vibes that were created up there when I was growing up. The responsibilities I had when living with my parents, the rough time I had through high school. I was sick a lot when I lived in Maine, I was constantly stressed out, I was painfully unpopular. Almost every time I see a familiar place in Maine I’m not filled with happy nostalgia, I start putting up defenses. My “hometown” doesn’t feel like Home at all, it’s a place that feels bad and must be avoided lest I encounter someone I knew from my life back then.<\/p>\n
I’ve certainly changed a lot since I left Maine. When I lived in Maine I was a loner, enjoying reading and walks alone in the park and on the beach above all other things. For the longest time I believed I’d be happy to live out my life in a cabin in Maine full of books and cats, as one of those crazy spinster cat ladies. After all, I knew from High School that I’m not fun or smart or interesting, so screw the world, I’ll be fine by myself. <\/p>\n
Of course, as we all learn, High School is nothing like the real world, so as soon as I left Maine my world view was turned on it’s head and it turns out I’m all those things I “knew” I wasn’t.<\/p>\n
And now? At this point in my life I would probably be miserable in that cat and book cabin. I actually like living near a city where I can always find new people to hang out with, things to do, and groups to get involved with. When I return to familiar places in Maine all I can think about is how tiny<\/i> it is, how few people there are. Where is the fun in that?<\/p>\n
That said, I wouldn’t object to moving to a more secluded place someday, I can see myself growing out of this social butterfly stage and wanting quiet again. But I’m now quite sure it won’t be Maine that I go back to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I came to an interesting realization when I was up in Maine for a vacation: I don’t love Maine as much as I thought I did. I love the ocean, the mountains, the general laid-back feel of the place. I’m quite proud of being a Mainer. But every time I go back I can’t help […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}