by C Kedor

Created on: August 23, 2008

I still couldn't believe that I was leaving the place that I had called home for nearly half of my life as we left the city limits of Laramie. The moving truck was packed and my car was carefully placed on a car hauler as we started on our journey to Colorado. Months even years before I had struggled with the thought of leaving Laramie let alone Wyoming, yet still I was venturing far away from my safety net, my soft place to land.

Laramie was a town that held many memories for me. My family blew in with the wind so to speak but I was the only one who stayed because I had fallen in love with it. My family used to ask me what kept me there as there was not one obvious wow factor that they could see keeping anyone there, least of all me. But I often times would answer them by saying that I liked living there because it felt like home to me. In fact, it only seemed logical to me that I stay there considering that I had invested so many years of my life living there first by chance and then as I became an adult by choice.

It was a typical Wyoming town and I loved it. It wasn't considered the smallest town but it wasn't considered one of the biggest towns either. It was just big enough to have enough stores and businesses to house almost all of my interests but small enough where that small town mentality was still very much alive. It came complete with the complimentary Wyoming wave of both complete strangers, acquaintances and friends everytime you happened by anyone on foot, bike or vehicle. It was home to the twenty-four hour gossip mill that worked overtime. Let's not forget those wonderful family owned greasy spoon resteraunts that I used to love to frequent. A place where they still had street dances complete with bails of hay for everyone to sit on, live bands and your drink of choice during the summertime. It was a place where not everyone but a lot of people knew my name.

As I passed west Laramie for the last time, I knew that I had reached the point of no return. I knew that if I wanted to back out of my decision to leave, there would be three very upset people. That is, they had just helped me pack my 5 totes of books, 4 totes of shoes, several bags and boxes of clothes, not to mention all of my keepsakes that I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of, and my furniture into the moving van. It had taken us half the day to load the moving truck and it would take at least another half day to unload it. I remember having to reach over to squeeze my then boyfriend's

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