cannot go back...

Sometimes I feel like or get the sensation as if I am living in an alternate reality....I drive around this new area with awe...I look at the rolling mountains and picturesque landscape and think, "well this is heaven"...

I watch squirrels, birds, woodchucks eat seeds and crackers off my balcony.   I look out my back window and see a family of deer walking....have even had a black bear tip over my trash can.... 

I take my kayak to the cove, and travel all over the lake, looking for coves and wildlife.  Letting the sun beat down on me, a lazy place...

I take my dog, hiking....we hike all over the mountains on trails...we search for waterfalls, rock formations, and any other surprise a hike might bring...

in the evening, I get my coffee or beer and sit by my fireplace...watching the flames...relaxing in my treehouse...it is so quiet here, no traffic,  no sirens, no people roaming around...it is like I am in the country, even though I am in the city....

there are so many beautiful old cemeteries that date back to the 1700's and revolutionary war....civil war....so many historical landmarks...so much history of our nation...so much to see and learn about my heritage, the Confederacy.    I am proud of my heritage....my family were tobacco growers and slave owners in North Carolina.   From what I can tell, they were good and decent people and took great care of their slaves....their slaves had shelter, food, families, clothing everything they needed.  At the end of the war, many of the slaves, even elected to stay with their "Masters",  In which they became paid servants...Slavery was a way of life, women did not have the right to vote or the right to do pretty much anything....

So much has changed since then, but I will never be ashamed of my heritage...it is who I am today...A Trammell, thru and thru....

but....some days I feel I am floating through space and time....I lose gaps of time, but now I know where those times go...

I walk around and go places and nobody knows who I am...I am a wallflower...I love that....I love the ability to be exactly who I am.   I do not care what the christians think, or the family, or anybody else.  I am living for me now.   I am free to be me, free to be happy..

Then,  I get a text or something from one of my kids, my dad, or my husband in Oklahoma....reality comes crashing down....memories of Oklahoma flood my head....the living in a prison, the ultra religious spouse and parents...the condemnation of my kids, and all the reminders of why I hate oklahoma....then I start feeling guilty for leaving....I start second guessing my decision,  I become insecure and feel like I am floundering....the "what ifs" come out and haunt me....

I cannot go back....I want to live....being here in Virginia is "life", being in Oklahoma is "death"...