Missing

We've been here well over a year now, yet I still just can't seem to adjust.  It's funny.... I lived here for nearly 20 years and never imagined living anywhere else.  I never thought I would love somewhere more than here.  But I do. Shaun and I were talking about how we can't believe it's only been 2 years since we left the farm.  It seems like it's been forever.  There are so many things I miss so much.  So many people I miss so much.  I find myself craving things as simple as staring up at the night sky and actually seeing stars.  I used to lay out in my hammock and watch the Milky Way rise over the farm.  I have to drive 4 hours to see it now.  I crave walking through the tall grass while skimming my hands over top as fireflies rose.  I long to hear coyotes calling in the distance.  I miss the smell of hay and the sound of frogs on warm humid nights.  I used to love the monarch migration and seeing hundreds of butterflies hanging from the pines.  I rarely see butterflies here.  Birds I'd never seen before... cardinals, mockingbirds, orioles, and goldfinches that sang so beautifully.  I miss seeing the calves wobble as they stood for the first time.  I desperately crave thunderstorms on the horizon and the smell of dirt as the rain fell on the country road.  I miss the wave from the farmer down the road and the tip of his hat.  I miss the big pine I would climb at dusk to watch the harvest as bats would whirl about catching bugs.  I miss the silence..... oh how I miss it.

There seemed to be so many simple things that now that I don't have them, I feel lost. They became such a part of who I was. I became very in tune with nature there, and in return more in tune with myself.  Now, I feel very out of tune.  I feel like that land is so far away like it never existed but in my dreams.  I thought I would be happy just to be back here around family..... and I am happy to be around them again, but there is just so much missing. 

A couple weeks ago my laptop crashed and I cried for days thinking I had lost all my photos from my life on the farm.  Today I discovered a flash drive that I had moved the photos onto and had forgotten about.  I cried as I looked through them, as floods of memories came back.  I didn't care about anything else on that laptop except those memories.  I never want to forget how I felt when I lived there.  I felt alive.