I fell out of love with Texas this summer. I know what you're thinking: What took you so damn long? But, there you have it, it only took 15 years. I can't pinpoint the precise moment—Was it during rush hour traffic on one of Dallas' 80 craptastic highways, all of which need to be repaved? Or was it on that lovely Sunday in early August when the temperature reached 110? Or, more likely, was it the week-long trip I took to San Francisco that reminded me some cities have an actual personality?—but I do know that over the past few months I've looked longingly to other states/countries. (It doesn't help that I regularly read blogs written by women who get to live in some of the most gorgeous places this continent has to offer.)
I look out my office windows and wish I could close my eyes and reopen them somewhere else. It's all too hot, too crowded, too conservative, too spread out here. THERE ARE NO H&MS HERE.
I never thought I would still be here, to be honest. Things just work out in ways we have no ability to predict. One minute I think I'm going to travel around Spain and then possibly settle in some new, exciting, never-been-to-before city and the next minute I've gone and fallen in love with some unexpected guy, and I decide making a home with him—in a cardboard box, a shack, a suburb in Texas, anywhere—is the coolest dream come true I could ever dream up. In reality, many things have kept us here: jobs we love, family we adore, cost of living we can stomach, friends, cheap beer, etc. All very good reasons to live somewhere, yes, but this summer the lure of a sparkling, crisp coast or rolling green hills or charming, colorful homes that aren't thrown up by the hundred, all one mirror image of the other, would not leave me alone.
I think I started believing what you (meaning, the average American) likely believe to be true about Texas. That it's a flat, ugly, hot red state that goes on for days. I probably started believing this because I haven't technically stopped sweating since May. And I haven't been able to drink summer cocktails since May, as well. (I'm sorry, but it shouldn't be LEGAL to suffer through a Texas summer without alcohol to blur the pain.)
Thankfully, something happened the other night on my way home from work. Every radio station was playing crappy songs, and I was hitting a string of red lights, so I reached in the back and pulled out a CD I hadn't listened to in years. A CD I first got the summer before my senior year of high school. A CD that skips and lurches forward in a few places because of how often I used to listen to it. A CD that will mean nothing—really, nothing—to so many of you, so I won't even bother to name it. If I name it, you'll furrow your eyebrows, possibly Google and then furrow them some more, and so I'll just say it's a CD by a Texas country artist, a particular genre of country music that so completely kicks the ass of mainstream country music that it is the kind of music—hands down—that made me first fall in love with this place when I was just 17.
After listening through the CD, I was catapulted back to being 17 again, back to when I was faced with the Very Big Decision of where I should go for college. I narrowed down my choices to three schools—all very different and all very spread apart. My mom and dad took me to tour each campus (one in Santa Cruz, Calif., one in Athens, Ga and one in College Station, Texas). I loved them all. I could see myself at each place. I wanted to buy sweatshirts and bumper stickers at each campus bookstore, but I had to pick one. I chose the last one, Texas A&M, a Texas state school nestled, really, in the middle of nowhere. Looking back, it's such an odd choice for me. It's a very conservative school known for an engineering program I never considered with more than one town's share of pick-up trucks chugging around.
But, lord, I fell in love with that place. Although I grew up in San Francisco and lived in another suburb of Texas for all of middle and high school, College Station became my home. It's so hard to put into words how I feel about that place, how many memories are brought back with the listen of one simple country song. Memories of cheap, cold beer downed in cheap, dusty bars where small-time musicians would play just feet away, strumming on cheap guitars, singing about the big state we all had in common. I'm sure most of you haven't been to College Station, but if you haven't, you won't get it. It's how all loves are, impossible to understand unless you've been in the thick of them. The people—although mostly conservative, yes—are friendly and down-to-earth and they smile at you when you walk by, whether they know you or not. The campus is beautiful, full of shady trees and squirrels. The bars and restaurants welcome anyone, anytime. The school has a heartbeat, and that sounds so cheesy, I'm nauseating myself, but every student would nod if they read that. They would whole-heartedly agree.
I know Mike's reasons for going to A&M—we talked about them in the really early days when everything was unknown and new. He was (is) four years older, but we came down and started school the same semester. We lived very separate lives until things intersected and collided the last semester of my senior year (although we both went on to stay in College Station and at school for another year). Mike and I are so different. He likes classic rock and the Discovery channel, and I watch The Hills and let One Tree Hill tell me which song I'm going to listen to on repeat. He is calm, easy, simple, and I am nervous and anxious. He never worries. I always do. His laugh is beautiful, mine is awkward. But, Mike and I have something very real and very important in common. We both fell in love with College Station, we both left it hesitantly and sadly when it was, undoubtedly, time to go. We waved goodbye to it all—the back roads and greasy cheeseburgers and game days and two-steppin' and the sea of maroon everywhere you look.
We're not leaving Texas anytime soon. We have, again, many, many reasons to stay. We are happy here. But, in a few weeks, thank goodness, Mike and I will drive three hours and we'll go home. We'll go to an Aggie game and we'll eat greasy food and drink cold, cheap beer (he'll have one for me).
We'll be reminded why we love Texas, why all the stereotypes in the world don't touch what is really beautiful about this state. It's easy to be lured by the beauty of a place known only through pictures. It's easy to feel restless and want to pick up and move somewhere, anywhere but here. It's hard to remember that home doesn't necessarily mean beautiful scenery and year-round fantastic weather. Sometimes home is where you found yourself, where you found him. Sometimes, as totally cheesy as it sounds, home is wherever the love is.
Such an awful picture, but here we are at an Aggie game a few years back. All sweaty and insanely happy.