I Want to Get Lost

In a new city, a new place, with new people and new things and...and...and new everything. I want to live somewhere I haven't spent the last six years of my life. I want to live somewhere outside of Utah County, where pretty much every town is just like the last, and I know where to go for anything from Lehi to Spanish Fork. I want to get out of student housing and meet different people who are closer to me not only in age, but also in stage of life. I don't want to feel like I'm floating on the surface of a life that I no longer live, watching students go to class and do homework while I watch Netflix because I have nothing else to do with my evenings.

People try to convince me that Provo is the place to be for single Mormon twenty-somethings, but my experience has taught me otherwise. In six years, I have been on a handful of dates. I have come close to getting into relationships, but never made the full leap. Boys in Provo just don't seem to be interested in me, and I am fast losing interest in them. I'm ready to try my hand at the Mormon boys in other places.

I've had these ants in my pants before. I've felt the need to run away and do something different with my life. But the feeling never lasts. Some other Provo opportunity would present itself and I would grab it and feel satisfied. That's not happening this time. Ever since I first felt the itch, it has only gotten stronger. I don't know how much longer I can go without scratching.

It's hard to decide what to do, because moving someplace else requires a complete upheaval of my life. New job, new place, new friends. And right now, all that change is incredibly enticing, while also being absolutely terrifying. I don't usually deal well with change, but I am craving it more than I have ever craved it before.

I want the experience of getting my own place in a city I've never lived in before. I want to buy my own furniture, decorate my own apartment, dirty my own dishes, and clean up my own messes. I don't want a cleaning check nazi forcing me to scour places that never see the light of day. I want to feel like a legitimate grown-up, one who pays her own bills and comes home to an empty apartment because that apartment is hers and hers alone.

I would love to be able to come home after a rough day at work and know that my TV is ready and waiting for me without wondering if my roommates are watching something or cuddling with their boyfriends. I want my own bathroom where the shower curtain always stays closed and I don't have to clean hair out of the drain that isn't mine. I don't want to have to try to read a book while wondering when the guys across the courtyard are going to stop blasting their annoying music.

Don't get me wrong; I don't hate Provo. I don't hate my roommates. I don't regret that I've stayed in Provo for as long as I have. It's just time for me to leave. I need to be done with the student housing scene, and starting now, I am going to start taking the steps I need to take to make that happen.