The uncertainty started long before this thread was started, and sadly, bittersweetly, after 5 years, I’m moving back home. By myself.
I have to work all day today and was up all night after a difficult talk with manthous, so I’ll be back as soon as I can.
I don’t have anything to ask. Just…welcome back. We’ve missed you!
Love and hugs your way.
Do you have a job lined up? It seems like Ohio must be seriously economically depressed. I think the cites of Ohio make up a huge percentage of the worst places to live lists right now. Have you considered staying in SoCal and trying to make it there?
Having now read the original thread (and finding to my surprise that I’d posted in it), I guess my question would just be, what happened, ultimately?
And also, I’m sorry that things didn’t work out as you’d hoped. 
Okay, but where in Ohio? Because there’s Ohio and Ohio, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, that’s the first thing I thought.
If you have a choice, definitely pick Cleveland Heights, which bills itself (somewhat ominously) as The City For A Lifetime.
And you don’t have to worry about missing out on excitement after the hustle-bustle of southern California. For instance, May 22 in Cleveland Heights is Community Shredding Day.
*"Bring your old bank statements, tax returns and other unwanted documents to:
Community Shredding Day
Saturday, May 22
9:00 am-12:00 noon
Cleveland Heights City Hall, 40 Severance Circle
The paper will be shredded onsite. There is a limit of 10 boxes per person"*
I’ll bet you can meet interesting people there.
My condolences. I can’t ever see moving back to Dayton.
Are you at peace with the decision? After living in California will you be able to cope with the weather again?
Sadly, so do many California cities. Riverside just charted in Yahoo’s list of cities in irreversible decline. And Joan Didion’s essay “Trouble in Lakewood” makes me wary of ever living in the LA area. She describes a fake suburb catering to a fraudulent middle-class, and the cracks are showing. Ohio might be pretty good right about now.
I’ll bet your kind of tired of packing and unpacking, town to town, up and down the dial. Sounds like you and he were never meant to be…
First of all, I picked THE worst time to start this thread- got handed extra shifts at work and have had little time for dallying
Basically, I want to be able to own a little house that I can afford. It’s not going to happen in SoCal. I have a good network of friends still in Ohio that can help me with my job search. I don’t really have that same network out here, so job searching has been a lot tougher. (I’m employed right now, but looking for a better job than I have…)
Well, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit, but being attracted to another guy was the catalyst for this. Nothing major happened between us- just a major crush, but this guy is my age, we’re WAY more on the same page than manthous and I, and I saw glimpses of possibility in that type of match-up that I have never seen in this relationship. That, coupled with my chronic homesickness & desire to be near my family, made me realize that this life with manthous is not the life for me. I have the tiniest window to have a kid if I change my mind, I can build a life together with someone ultimately, instead of moving into someone’s life like I did out here. There were a lot of reasons. And I wish I wasn’t late to work so that I could elaborate more on this…
Me too. I wanted to be happy here with manthous, but I’ve just been so chronically unhappy, and it’s manifested itself in SO many areas of my life.
Columbus area (where I’m from).
I’m not crazy about Dayton either- I’m more of a central/eastern Ohio lover (the rolling hills! Malabar Farm!)
The way I know I’m at peace is that although this is heartbreakingly sad, I cannot, cannot, cannot wait to get back home. That’s enough in itself.
I’m starting to lean that way myself. When I met manthous, I’d been moving around and wasn’t feeling settled, and I think he offered a kind of stability/safety I was looking for at the time, which I probably should have sought first in myself, and not someone else…
Hello, neighbor.
You and I are going to be switching places. I’ll be going from Ohio to CA next year, if all goes well.
I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone.
Another neighborly “Hi!” I’m in Wooster, xanthous.
What kind of work are you going to be looking for?
Graphic design, specifically production artist-type work. My old job isn’t hiring, so I hear, although if they were I’d be in like flynn, even if I had to take a pay cut. I’ll drop a line to my old boss anyway. I have a few contacts that could likely find me freelance work.
Sequential Threads:
Ask the girl who’s moving back home to Ohio after 5 years in SoCal
What was your farthest booty call? or How Far for Sex?
What do you expect life to be like in Ohio again when you get back?
I noticed for myself after I was gone for a year and moved back to my hometown that it was exactly the same but I felt like I had changed a lot and after the initial rush of getting home that it wasn’t as great as I thought it would be to be back.
It will seem really, really small, very green (comparatively) and a bit foreign at first. This I already know due to my visits every year. The freeways (they’re not even called freeways in Ohio- the highways) seem so tiny and slow when I’m visiting.
I know I’ve grown up a lot since I moved, and I’ve grown a decent pair of balls living in this impossibly big, relatively unfriendly (comparatively) city. I feel much more brave than before, which I hope will help me really establish myself in a way I hadn’t been able to before.
The sucky thing is that I’ve really felt more at home here in the last year- kind of used to the rush and crush. But even if all my family and friends were here with me, I think it would still not feel quite right. I’m a small-town girl in my gut. I will never not be intimidated by L.A.
Looks like we’ll even out the Census!
Having moved from LA 30 years ago to the east coast I can admit that the greenery is intimidating after the brown, sere LA basin. But you’ll adjust.
Small town Marietta, Ohio, here. The four bedroom house next door to mine sold last year for $38K and apartments routinely go here for $300/month. We’d love to have you here. But it’s two hours to Columbus and jobs? Well…