Sayonara NeverNeverLand.

When I return to the town I grew up in, I have this overwhelming sense of un-belonging. It's familiar to me, like an old house, but the people and places within it have changed in the ten years since I left. Its been almost ten years exactly since my dad and I packed up my mattress and headed down to the uncharted territory known as 'Southern California'. I remember on the Highway 5, two cars in-between my Volvo and his blue Astro van packed full of everything I owned at twenty one, sneaking a single cigarette in that seven hour, four hundred mile drive, and thinking if he saw me, I'd be in trouble.

I have that same sense of un-belonging now, when I return to my Tiny Town on the Beach that I only left less than a year ago - barely six months 'officially'. Coffee shops I loved have closed, businesses have changed their names, and those who I knew by face and by name are few and far between. I really only know a few people there now, one being the owner of a restaurant patio that Goldi and Beauty and all my other relocated friends frequented often.

Who are You People?

Even he says that there's a new group running around town, younger and unfamiliar to even him.
I imagine this happens often in tiny college towns on the coast - Mass introductions, studies, townies, and finally(!) Mass Exodus as they - myself included - relocate en masse. My Tiny Town, a Neverland if I've ever seen one in the flesh, sees it's residents grow up, and move on - move onto better jobs, more affordable Houses and a whole new group of fresh face'd patio dwellers take over in their absence.
It's the natural order of things, I imagine.

I know this feeling all too well.

I saw my Restaurateur yesterday, as I was in town for a quick appointment - and when I asked how he was, he responded, 'Well, I'm not living in Irvine, so I'm good' with a sneer. 
I felt as though, somehow by moving on from our Neverland, I had become a traitor of sorts. And, in returning to that funky beach town, with its familiar derelicts outside the same dive bars at 3 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and its funky Mom and Pops, and its (now somewhat threatening) tattoo'd men cruising its streets - that I was, in fact, a Traitor. I left, returning once in a Blue Moon as a woman who wants wifi for her iPad so she can better look at Wallpapers. ('What's that? What does that mean?' the restaurateur asked, thinking it was some new gaming app, or slang for Godknowswhat.)
But, we chatted, over my single glass of wine, after his somewhat accusatory You've Left and So Has Everyone Else, and we caught up on... Well, nothing really.
There was nothing to catch up on, only things to remember.
He asked about the Ex of 5 Years, now nearly 3 years in the past - 'Still never spoken to one another'- and we reminisced about some of our wilder times. He inquired about Goldi & Beauty, and didn't seem too surprised when I informed him that they, too, had moved (on).

But as for Now: we had nothing to speak of, nothing in common. He'd broken up with Whatsherface, who didn't like Apartment F, and now was Just Hanging. And, I was looking at Wallpaper, the newest coolest thing all the ladies are talking about.
But that feeling of treason committed, that sense of 'Things have changed and  now you don't belong' permeated our entire conversation - or lack thereof. Questions of Jim's profession, and home owning status were met with...

Pause. 
A head nod.
An 'Oh.'

I got the overwhelming feeling that not only did he judge my leaving town and moving to Irrrrvine (safest city in America!) he judged my being with someone with a real job and a real house as opposed to the boys of my dating past; really, as opposed to the Lost Boys who populated my NeverNeverLand - the blue collar drunks and the terminal students and all of the twentysomething boys in the in-between.
Okay, perhaps 'judged' is the wrong word, but I could see the wheels turning in his head.
And that's not to say he wasn't - or isn't - happy for me, but I could sense the overarching impression of  'Oh, Orange County Boy ChaChing' being formed in his head. And, I guess, in all fairness, I don't blame him; there I am, hair an 'early Thirties' bob, with an iPad mini & my Malibu Bad Ass' Louis Vuitton Neverfull on mega-loan on the seat next to me, talking about picking out wallpapers for our bathroom.
But it's not because I left town to become some smug fauxsewife;

I left because it was simply time for me to leave.

Time for Me a leave this Tiny Town, just like it was time for me to leave my Hometown ten years ago.
My time was up in NeverNeverland. 
I had out grown it.
Like a house too small for a growing family, or a studio apartment to cramped for an Adult Woman.
And, like that, last summer, NeverNeverLand no longer held a place for me; and, furthermore, the place within it that I had once filled was that of an unhappy, childish girl - a girl who was (against her best intentions) sometimes not the greatest friend, and more importantly, at the very end of a cycle of self combustion.

I'm lucky I met Jim when I did, in the midst of rebuilding my own sense of autonomy and my sense of purpose and personal successes.
It just so happened that I had finished with the growing pains that came along with growing out of the that Tiny Town, and I got out, when the time was right.

And so, I got out, lucky that I had Jim to help me with the step.
And so, I moved on, holding both Jim & many a memory close to my heart.

And so, I bid adieu to my dear Neverland. 
And on my way I went.