Mother's Breast or Ferocious Independence?

[SycamoreCircle]

My parents live in Alabama. I moved to NYC in '99 and have more or less called it home.

 

I'm very close to my mother who was born in 1938. We see each other once a year.

 

I moved to NYC for the purpose of pursuing an acting career. I had some small victories, but now at age 38 I realize that it's a lottery and that I have interest in so many other, more modest things.

 

There's a lot about NYC, more particularly Brooklyn, I love. However, there's a lot I could easily live without.

 

Most of my friends have left the city for good.

 

I've just finished a visit to my mother and this departure, more than any other in the past, hurts so deeply.

 

I don't want to have my mom pass in a number of years and I live so subtracted from her life. We're friends. I want to do things with her and be with her.

 

After this last BU, I felt acutely the love and support of family. All of my family lives down here. All those years in NY and what people are in my life? I can't claim friends. It's sad.

 

I'm so torn. I'm artistic and sensitive and eccentric and NYC has always felt more natural to me. But my mother is the world to me and just recently she confessed her unhappiness. My sister has encouraged me to move back. She thinks that it would change the perspective of my mom. I have to agree.

 

The transition would be tough, I think. But I feel a lot like a ship floating in an empty bay in NY.

 

I can expound further on the pros and cons of NY and Alabama, but from what I've told you so far---what would you do? What decision would sit right with you?

[fireflywy]

Ouch. Well, make a list of the little things you enjoy. I live in Wyoming and all the easterners here complain about "culture" (whiny voice) because we don't have the same amount of diversity that exists back east and our "culture" is that of the West and the outdoors.

 

So anyway, make a list of the things you really enjoy about your current lifestyle and what access you have to things. Then, find how much access you'd have in Alabama in certain areas. Then consider pace of life, job opportunities, etc and weigh if you have lived enough of "the life" in one area or the other which will cover your concept of time.

 

Also, just remember, that if you DID go back to Alabama, that New York is always a plane ticket away.

 

Its a tough one.

[fireflywy]

And yes, be aware of the time you have with people. I lost my father in February of 2014 to leukemia at the age of 70, far earlier then I ever expected. I, however, am glad that I was here and had time to spend with him as an adult and found value in what i once shrugged off as a younger man. It was a gift.

 

Hell, maybe something magical will happen if you make a change and perhaps you'll find more then you ever thought you were looking for.