One year ago today, I got up early in London, thought I missed my plane, got on said plane, and then landed in Rome.  I was less than a week in to the trip that started this blog.  I was slowly getting in to the swing of traveling by myself, figuring out what worked for me and what didn’t.

I was in my hotel room, checking email when I read that Patrick Swayze had died.  I spent some of the afternoon huddled behind my umbrella on the steps of a museum that was, of course, closed on Mondays.  I ate dinner at an amazing restaurant with a waiter who charmed me over the nearly three hours I sat over an incredible bowl of pasta, a plate of grilled vegetables, two glasses of prosecco, and one glass of limoncello, much of which was on the house.  I walked back to the hotel after dinner during a brief break from thunderstorms with lightning that lit the night sky.  I fell asleep that night, content to be back in Italy.

Starting last Thursday, I have been reliving that trip day by day.  I am so thankful that I began this blog and chronicled my daily thoughts and posted a few pictures.  I am thankful that enough people read it and told me they liked it that I decided to keep writing.  It has been a phenomenal outlet for a less than stellar year.

I miss the travel and the new sights.  I miss running through historic cities.  It was an incredible experience.

But today I got up and ran 7 miles on one of my favorite streets in Nashville.  I got a behind-the-scenes tour of the work being done at Vanderbilt University’s main library.  I helped out my parents by taking out their dog so they didn’t have to come home as early.  And I will finish out the day with dinner with two amazing friends.

I am slowly settling, slowly getting used to this new life.  There are some incredible advantages and I’m so lucky to be near family and friends.  Thanks for sticking along for the ride.

I have never been good at dealing with issues.  I’m much happier to sweep them under a rug than actually meet them head on.

I realize that this is not a good way to live.  It has gotten me in to trouble on more than one occasion.  And even though I went to a Quaker college where confrontation was actually part of the honor code, I never really got better at it.  My freshman year roommate got away with a lot of crap because I was unable or unwilling to talk with her about the times I woke up to find our room had three bodies in it, not two.

I have been in therapy twice in my life.  The first was when an eating disorder threatened to engulf me and it took numerous professionals and two amazingly dedicated parents to bring me back from the brink.  The woman I saw this time saved my life, of that I have no doubt.  I stayed with her even when I went back to college; our twice-weekly sessions had made it easy for me to transition to phone appointments.  My parents and I spoke of her in a mixture of reverence and awe.

The second started last July, when I could no longer take the life events that kept coming at me.  My aunt was sick, my job was iffy, and my marriage wasn’t quite as stable as I wanted it to be.  After a few sessions with a crazy woman who spent more time twirling in her chair and taking her shoes on and off then talking to me about my problems, I searched again and found a woman just 10 minutes from our place in McLean.  She was great and reminded me of my Nashville therapist.  My first session was her was just a lot of blubbering as I laid out the things that landed me in her chair.

I am still seeing a therapist, although my relocation has taken me back to the office of the woman who once saved my life.  She remembers people I used to talk about regularly by name and still has one of the best wardrobes of any woman I know.  And she still makes me confront issues that I would rather push far, far away.

This past week I haven’t been sleeping well.  After nights of fitful sleep filled with dreams and hourly wake-ups, the alarm clock has been a painful reminder of rest unattained.  I know that there have been thoughts swirling through my head, they usually are the number one cause of unpleasant dreams for me (rather than late night pizza).

All day yesterday before my session, I wondered what there was to talk about.  Sure, there’s the usual job searching and settling in Nashville, but all of that seemed superficial and boring.  I spend a lot of time by myself and in my own head, so it would just be going over the same crap again and again.  When I first sat on her couch, I told her as much.

But because she is good, we quickly got to the thing that bugs me the most, something that I have been afraid to confront in an attempt to escape more hurt.  Last September, I was headed out for three weeks in Europe, an exciting getaway that would take me away from my regular life.  I’m not doing that this year, and clearly there’s a part of me that longs for such an escape.  But even as I talked about this, I knew it wasn’t the crux of the matter.

This is. Anyone who knows me in real life or pays even the smallest amount of attention to my grammar realizes that I have gone from using “we” to “I” and “ours” to “mine.”   We are still  married, but only legally, awaiting a court date to undo what we did nearly three years ago.  And the fact that it is September, a month that I giddily approached a few years ago, is tearing me apart.  As I sat in my therapist’s office and finally confessed this yesterday, tears streamed down my cheeks.  Acknowledging the power that this month has on me right now broke the spell.

Maybe that’s why I have changed the look of the blog.  I have been writing about the unpleasantness elsewhere, but those are my private words that I just won’t share.  But I know that I write better when I feel passionately about something, it’s why this is one of my favorite pieces of anything I’ve written.

Confronting the fact that I’m still hurting, that transitions are hard for me, even when they involve increased time with friends and family, is a step that needed to be taken.  I’m tired of having two separate fronts; if I can lay out much of my life on this corner of the internet, why not something that is profoundly altering my life?

Something changed yesterday when I finally admitted that September hurts.  There wasn’t an immediate rush of relief, but there was something.  I didn’t sleep much better last night and the alarm was still unwelcome this morning.  When I crawled back in bed a little while later to play with Sasha, I found my eyes closing and I went with it.  I woke up three hours later, refreshed for the first time in weeks.  I need the release and the honesty.  Only by confronting my demons will I be able to banish them for good.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30, took the dog out, ate a banana, and put on my running clothes.  I drove over to Edwin Warner Park and voluntarily ran 9.3 miles of hills.  I run because I’m crazy.

It was a small race, with just about 100 runners in the 15k distance.  I talked with a few folks before the start and laughed along with a group chiding their friend who lost a bet and thus had to run the race in a pink tutu.  I run to connect with others.

As I covered those miles mostly by myself, as usually happens in small races.  I’m slower than the lead pack but a bit faster than the back of the pack.  I trudged up the hills, flew down the other side, and took in the beauty of Nashville’s largest park.  I run because I see new things.

This week has been hard for a number of reasons.  But as I covered the miles and pounded the pavement, I felt the stress start to lift off my shoulders.  Pushing my body up the hills, even when I had to walk them, was a physical reminder that I am strong, that I will get through it.  I run because it makes me tough.

Fortunately, it was a cool morning.  The humidity was high – weather.com told me 94% before I left the house.  By the time I finished, it was 82 and crossing the final field in the sun was brutal.  I was covered in sweat.  I run because it’s cleansing.

I crossed the finish line, enjoying the attention that you get at a small race when only one person crosses at a time.  Someone took the bottom portion of my bib, someone else placed a medal around my neck, and then I was handed a card to write my name on for the results.  The card had #37 on it.  Only 36 people crossed the finish line before me.  I run because I accomplish goals.

I dropped my card in the cooler as instructed, grabbed a cookie, stretched a bit, and then headed to the car.  Once in the car, I pulled out my favorite cookie, the ginger cookie from Dozen, and devoured it, enjoying every bite.  After my shower I visited Great Harvest to get my breakfast.  I run because I love carbs.

There was a large inflatable wall at the race that the race directors asked us to write on, posing the question of why do you run.  I left before I could write on it, I just didn’t know what to put.  But clearly I’ve been thinking about it.  I run because I can, because I want to, because the feeling of flying down hills is amazing, because putting one foot in front of the other over and over again reminds me to just keep moving forward.

One of the most obvious things about me is that I adore dogs.  My soft spot for dogs is huge.  Rarely do I not gush over a dog.  I love them.

This morning, returning from the gym, my head was in a bit of a fog, thanks to some strange dreams coupled with some fresh bad news.  I was on Harding Road, heading through the heart of Belle Meade, when I noticed two dogs on the side of the road.  They both had collars on but it was obvious they weren’t supposed to be out running around the neighborhood like they were.

The car ahead of me had slowed, trying to figure out what to do.   Without thinking, I stopped my car and put my hazard lights on.  I didn’t think to pull in to a driveway, I just wanted to get out of the car before anything could happen to one or both of the dogs.  They were very friendly and I soon rounded them up and led them to the passenger side of the car, ready to load them in to the back seat.  One dog had a tag which identified her as Abby and included a phone number.  I intended to call the number to return them, but I needed to get out of the middle of the road.

For those unfamiliar with Harding Road in Belle Meade, you need to know that this is a two lane road.  My car was blocking traffic as I herded the dogs.  When I got in the car at the gym, I had only unlocked the driver’s door, a safety mechanism that I appreciate on dark nights but don’t love when I’m trying to get out of the middle of the road with cars backing up in both directions.

As I was trying to get the dogs in the car, a man had pulled over in to a driveway on the opposite side of the street.  I didn’t see him until he offered to unlock my car.  He had seen me struggling and I gratefully motioned to the driver’s door which he opened, reaching in to unlock the rest of the doors.  He then walked over to where I stood with the dogs, one of whom had already slipped her collar once.  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number while I got them in the backseat.

Fortunately, someone answered quickly and my co-rescuer informed him about the dogs.  He handed the phone over to me so that I could get the details.  I got the address, we exchanged names, and the man thanked me for returning his dogs.  I hung up, handed the phone back to its owner, thanked him profusely, and finally got back in the car and unblocked traffic.

The dogs were well behaved and clearly used to riding in the back seat of a car.  I looked back a couple of times to see two panting pups sort of smiling at this next part of their big adventure.  When I pulled up to the house there were two 20-something women waiting for me.  They informed me that the dogs belonged to their boss and they had somehow escaped from the fenced-in backyard in the few seconds the girls had their backs turned.  One of them quickly took the dogs back to the yard as the other one handed me a bottle of wine on orders of her boss.  They then thanked me for likely saving their jobs.

As I got back in to my car, I noticed one of the cars in the driveway was covered with various USN stickers.  I rolled down the window and asked the girls if their boss had a kid at USN.  They didn’t know the name of the school, only that he had an 11-year-old son who went to a local private school.  I could only shake my head at the small worldness of Nashville.

The whole episode put a smile on my face.  No one honked as I rounded up the dogs and spent time on the phone, even though I was clearly causing a traffic issue.  Drivers took turns using the single unblocked lane, waving us across with the dogs or when I returned the cell phone.  There was the stranger who hopped out of his car when he saw what I was doing and what help I needed.  And then the fact that we weren’t just rescuing two dogs, but the two dogs of an 11-year-old boy.  These two mutts (clearly rescue dogs) are obviously beloved members of a family.  I didn’t need the bottle of wine, even if it does look like a good one.  I’m just a firm believer in karma and taking advantage of the few time constraints of unemployment.

I lived in the Washington, DC area for almost 6 years.  I started off in a building complex that was just across the river from Georgetown; I could actually walk home from class at GW on Fridays.  Just across the street from the Iwo Jima memorial, it was here that I first watched in awe as Marine Corps Marathon finishers staggered home with their families.  It was a great location, but the apartment became a bit too small once it went from one inhabitant to two.

The first move took me out a bit further, three stops on the Orange Line to be exact.  It was still walking distance, in a pinch.  On Inauguration Day 2009, we walked from the apartment to the Capitol building to experience history.  It was a nice location, across the street from the metro, in a nice building with a nice view.  Watching thunderstorms roll in over the Virginia suburbs was wonderful.  And I could still run to the city when I needed a change of scenery.

Three years after that move, I made my last move within the area.  This one took me much further out, away from a metro stop and with only one site within walking distance.  Fortunately, that one thing was a Safeway that was open (and stocked with wine) in the middle of Snogasm 2010.  This apartment was where the puppy grew up, where I hosted my first Thanksgiving, and where I bid adieu to my adopted hometown.

I hadn’t taken advantage of what the city has to offer for quite some time.  Only once did I run on the Mall this spring.  Rarely did I venture out of the suburbs.  I don’t even know the last time I rode the metro.  But I still found myself proud to say that I lived in that area.  I subscribed to the Washington Post, I read DCist.com obsessively, and I prided myself on being able to get around the city without (too many) directions.

Now that I’m in Nashville, the place that I pined for so desperately, I of course find myself missing our nation’s capital.  I still read DCist.com somewhat obsessively, check washingtonpost.com multiple times a day, and get reports from friends about the latest weather.  I miss the idiotic tourists who couldn’t figure out where to stand and where to walk on the metro escalators.  I miss the view of the White House from Constitution, the Mount Vernon Trail, my favorite running spot, and the familiar route around my neighborhood that Sasha and I walked.

Like any long-term relationship, I console myself by remembering the things that I didn’t like, that I wanted no part of.  The entitlement of McLean residents who drove expensive cars and needed to feel and act better than everyone else.  The horrendous traffic that made getting anywhere between 7-9:30 am and 4-7 pm painful.  The fact that I never felt truly welcome in my own apartment building.

I know that it hasn’t been very long since I left and my roots aren’t very deep in Nashville just yet.  I’m discovering new joys about my true hometown, including a bustling farmer’s market with incredible produce and hidden treasures at nearby antique markets.  The heat hinders my ability to get out with the dog, but it’s certainly fun to see Sasha interact with my parents’ dog.  I bought four pounds of home-grown tomatoes and 4 huge zucchinis for just $9.  There are definitely perks to being here.

So for now I’ll keep checking my D.C. websites, enjoy the weather reports from the mid-Atlantic, and miss the things that lured me there in the first place.  But I’ll also continue to seek out new restaurants, revisit old friends, and learn to enjoy what Tennessee’s capital has to offer.

…three weeks in.

– Woodlands is awesome.  It’s really nice to look at a menu and want to eat 80% of the food.

– You never know how often you use your microwave until you try to cook a meal without one.  I bought frozen peas to put in a pasta salad today and had to leave them in the freezer.

– Mosquitoes are horrible, horrible creatures.  My record is 7 bites in one time outside with the dog and 21 bites in total.

– Nashville is still very gun shy from the floods in May.  We got a decent amount of rain this week, the Cumberland started to rise, and people began pulling out the sand bags.  Fortunately, the river crested 12 feet below the point it reached earlier this year.

–  It is better to decide where your chest full of dishes goes before you load it up with dishes.  It’s much more of a pain to move it once it’s loaded up with breakables.

– Did I mention that mosquitoes are HORRIBLE?

– Google chat is a great way to stay in touch with those you miss.

– It is nice to connect to adults that were previously just your mother or father’s co-worker as an adult, to have a real conversation about living and working in Nashville.

– There’s no shame in frequenting the various self-serve frozen yogurt stores.  Often.

– There’s no place like Nashville for killer hill workouts.

– A vodka and cranberry in a full size water glass is $4.75.  Despite the fact that the vodka was awful, that’s still really cheap.

– Having dinner with your parents just because it’s Wednesday rather than because you have to leave soon is really, really nice.

As an only child, I’ve never had trouble defining what is “mine.”  My parents are mine, all mine.  My childhood dog was mine.  In college, I was easily perturbed when my roommate would cross the invisible dividing line between her stuff and mine and take various items.

The first couple of weeks in Nashville, however, have been a bit more difficult in determining what is mine.  In Virginia, I had my gym, my preferred grocery stores, and my running routes.  I spent what others would probably see as too much time researching gyms in Nashville, trying to find one to call my own.  I like the one I’ve ended up with, but I still don’t feel quite at home yet, despite the hours I’ve already logged on their treadmills.

I don’t have a grocery store, mostly because I don’t have a kitchen.  I’ve been dragging my feet as far as unpacking those boxes.  My old kitchen was incredible; I often referred to it as “hump-worthy.”  There were seemingly endless cabinets, counter space that stretched for miles, and a full size pantry.  As I packed box after box, I pictured the small kitchen I was coming to, wondering how I would ever make it all fit.  I’m slowly starting to figure it all out, and I’m sure that I’ll settle in there before too long.  I think it helps that I now have food in my fridge with more nutritional value than diet coke.

I’m getting used to the flow of a new city.  I found myself hesitant to go across town this past Friday at 3, worried that rush hour would be miserable.  When I set out, however, I discovered that 3 pm in Nashville doesn’t really call for the same preparation in travel that 3 pm on the Beltway does.

In unpacking my home, I’ve found that some things are more mine than others.  The second bedroom, aka the study, was one of the first rooms to come out of the boxes.  I started with books stacked across the floor.  Histories mixed with classic fiction mixed with guilty pleasure like David Sedaris and Dave Barry.  I worked through them all, separating the eras of history, focusing in on WWI and Vietnam, those stacks becoming taller and taller.  When I finally set about putting them on shelves, I discovered that there really is a hierarchy in my head.  Only certain decades and subjects were allowed on the higher shelves; others were relegated to lower ones, where eyes don’t generally linger.  But that hierarchy, that was purely my own.

…three days in.

1. The fact that there are now 7 self-serve frozen yogurt places makes me insanely happy.

2. This heat is no joke.  And don’t even get me started on the humidity.  I tried to go for a run Sunday morning and it was more of a swim.  I came home and found out that it was 92% humidity.

3. There are still way too many people driving SUVs.  I do realize that I drive a sort of SUV, but I’m talking about the giant ones like Escalades, Suburbans, and the like.  I’m not used to seeing those things around.

4. I need to get used to the fact that drivers here are incompetent, otherwise I am likely to cause a major road rage incident.  Good grief, who taught these people how to drive?

5. When taking the dog out for a mid-morning pee results in two new bug bites, it’s time to stock up on Deet.

6. Never take an underground parking spot for granted.  This is the first time in 6 years that I’ve parked outdoors and the difference is astonishing.  I actually burned myself with the metal part of my seat belt buckle.

7. The Tennessean really is as bad as you thought, if not worse.  Make sure to bookmark washingtonpost.com and visit it often for real news.

8. Spending less time watching tv, talking on the phone, and being online because you have family and friends around you really does make all the moving hassle worthwhile.

The problem with wishing away the future is that you all too soon find yourself desperately trying to slow time.  I have two nights left in this apartment, two nights left as a DC area resident.  Only one more full day and then the moving truck comes to take my items away.

I keep waiting for reality to hit, but it’s been more of a tap-tap-tap.  Walking away from my friends at dinner on Sunday – tap.  Saying good-bye to my trainer at the gym – tap.  Delivering flowers to the vet to thank them for all their help over the past year – tap.

The apartment echoes differently already with the walls clear of art and the books packed away.  I can no longer eat anything that requires more spice than salt and pepper and more preparation than can be done with a can opener.  I think it finally caught up with the dog today, and she’s been glaring at me, staring as I put everything she’s ever known in to boxes.

I ran this morning at Carderock, a farewell to my favorite place to pass a few miles.  I’ve hauled furniture, clothes and shoes to Goodwill and more things are leaving tomorrow via a junk hauler.  My car has been serviced and is ready to make the drive to Nashville, ready to back track out the same way I drove in nearly 6 years ago.

In 2004, my best friend at the time and I drove in my car while my parents followed us in a U-Haul filled with enough furniture to for my small one-bedroom apartment in Rosslyn.  This year I’ll drive back out 66 and connect up to 81 with my dog by my side.  It’s just the two of us, starting over and starting anew.

Something strange happens at mile 23 of a marathon.  You realize you’re almost there.  And then you realize that you still have over 3 miles left to run.  Looking back, it’s not so far.  Looking ahead, it’s not even close to the finish line.  There’s a lot of ground left to cover.

I currently find myself at Mile 23 of my non-running marathon.  We are just 10 days out from our next race and I am three weeks from living in Nashville.  I’ve come so far from the upheaval of this past spring, but I’m still so far from really starting the next chapter of my life.

We’re slowly getting the volunteers we need for the race.  The emails are flying furiously between the various race staff as we try to make sure that all possibilities for next week are planned for and covered.  A week from now, we will be open for the first day of packet pick-up in Denver.  This is the exciting part when we get to see the hard work come together.  Any event planner can tell you that the days before an event are both the most exciting and the most nerve-wracking ones of the whole process.  (I once had an intern convinced that I was drunk after a successful event.  Try as I might, I just couldn’t get her to believe that it was just me being stress-free.)

Things related to the move are getting done.  I booked a moving company and have started hounding them for a firm date of when I should expect them to come, pick up all my stuff, and cart it 600+ miles south.  I’ve got Sasha’s final appointment booked at the vet to get all of her shots before I load her up in the car, along with the art, and cart us those same 600+ miles south.  I’ll probably pack a few boxes this weekend as I putter around and watch the World Cup.

I’m starting to think of the things that I want to do in DC before I leave.  There are trails that I would like to run, but the oppressive heat and humidity is mostly confining me to the treadmill.  I signed up for a last race the Saturday evening before I leave.  It’s a 5K in Crystal City put on by my favorite running store in the area.  I’ve got dinner scheduled at my favorite Indian food restaurant with my favorite DC folks for the last Sunday evening I’m in the area.

But even as I look ahead at all of these things, I still see three weeks stretched out ahead of me like those painful last three miles of a marathon.  Yes, time marches on and I can do the same, just putting one foot in front of the next, but the intangibility drives my inner control freak crazy(er).

I want to enjoy all these lasts as I disconnect from the life I built here.  I want to look ahead at the life I’m putting together in Nashville.  Life is all about balance, and yet again I can’t seem to find mine quite yet.  So I’ll tell myself the same thing I would at Mile 23 of a marathon, the same thing inscribed on my key chain: one more mile, one step at a time.