"Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.”

I lie to people all the time.  When someone asks "Why did you leave Hawaii for Logan?", my automatic response, a blatant lie really, is "It was expensive, I wanted to finish school."  While, yes,  I did want to finish school the truth is I very well could have at the University of Manoa; I could have claimed residency the month we left.  But in reality it wasn't that expensive for me, Mike was paying rent and I was working full-time, paying whatever miniscule bills I had to pay-phone, credit card, utilities, food, not even gas because I owned only a bike while there.  I really had it quite easy, I wasn't struggling to stay afloat.  We went out to eat, we drove to the North Shore on days off and went out for lunch at Big City Diner or drinks in town(Honolulu) at a little place called Coconut Willy's that has since gone out of business.  The truth is, perhaps, I was just unhappy, with myself, my job, a relationship that has since become an occasional swap of texts, a friendship I know still exists amidst the distance and across landscapes, but one that almost feels the same even when we slept in the same bed, and there is no longing for that, no longing for the person I was then.  Sure, I was tan, fifteen pounds lighter, living in the middle of the Pacific, but there was something I hadn't yet grasped, some concept of acceptance or contentedness or gratitude or maybe there wasn't something I had yet let go of, like the desire for more or change, and maybe I still haven't. I tell people this, without thought, because it seems easier, it seems like the kind of response or reason any sane person would leave something so seemingly "good", so aparently "put together", but sometimes we leave the facade of perfection to others simply for the sake of what feels right inside.