Love...Hate
How did it get to this point? How did I come to despise living in Arizona? I can easily pinpoint the time frame that this happened. The first year was the “wonder year.” We spent so much time ooohing and aaahing the beautiful scenery. The mountains, palm trees, saguaro cactus, sunsets collided to send us into sensory overload in the best way. We spent long evenings driving around or walking and exploring our new home and all the desert vistas it had to offer.
By the second year I discovered I’d developed a nagging voice in my head. I’d get frequent thoughts about how weird a lot of the people seemed to be, or how many rude people we came across in our daily interactions, or how miserable the summers were, etc. I asked my husband and found that he noticed the same things. At that point I started bringing up the possibility of going back home to Chicago. We went back home for a weeklong visit and we were set on returning home. The cost of living in Arizona, while generally lower, was not as cheap as we hoped it would be. We found the lack of things to do here and the resulting boredom ridiculous.
There was one hurdle: I had withdrawn from school when we decided to relocate to Arizona and I vowed to finish nursing school before moving again. It was one of those life goals that I just had to do--ya know? So I resigned to staying put at least for a little while longer to finish nursing school. Soon life happened. We had a baby and then a few years later another. Almost begrudgingly, I agreed to buy a house here because renting no longer made sense given that we had no immediate plans to leave. I put school on hold until I could have time to focus. After several years, I went back to finish my goal of graduating and becoming a nurse.
My final semester, I became pregnant with our third child. I dragged my heavy belly off the bed in 110 plus degree weather during my 8th month of pregnancy to sit for my RN licensing exam--the NCLEX. In my head I knew that I had let too much time get away and I had to do this now so that we could begin to move on. When the computer shut off after about 76 questions my heart jumped in my mouth! I just knew it was over and I had failed. I started shaking. I composed myself and got up to leave.
The next day I found out I was officially a Registered Nurse! I had passed and could now scratch this off my life to-do list. I started looking for a nursing job to develop my skills so that finding a job whenever we decided to relocate would be easier. At this point, we’d been Arizona residents for 9 LONG years. After the second year I went from love to like to hate. I often would feel my husband out and he seemed to like living here for the most part. Only later did I find out it wasn’t as much that he liked it, it was just more of it being the “safe and familiar” choice.
On the other hand, I’ve spent the past 10 years trying to hush the feeling that I needed to get out of this place and hoping that my husband would have a change of heart. How long would we live in this state that lacks culture and identity? That is dreadfully lacking in good food? That overflows with rude and sometimes ignorant people? Sorry but when Walmart is the number 2 employer for the state, that does not bode well. I’ll post more on the jobs (or lack of good ones) later.