I had a lovely run last night at Woodlawn and as I was rounding the corner and the downtown skyline came into view I suddenly realized how much I have come to love this city.  I have been here three years now and so much has happened.  I know I have ranted on and on about the bad but there has been so many wonderfull times for me here too.  So much of love and happiness, more than I every thought I would find when I moved here. 

Initially, moving here was just a compromise.  I really need a change and I wanted to live in a city again, but Austin was my first choice.  I lived there before and really enjoyed it, but in the end I couldn't afford to buy a house there.  San Antonio was the only other place close enough to the Valley, and I wanted to be close because my sister has been ill the last couple of years, and I wanted to know I could get on a plane and be there in thirty minutes.  So, San Antonio it was.  I looked around and found a great old stone house.  I could afford it and it had character to spare.  My little stone house was so lonely for me at first.  I thought I could hardly bear it but slowly I have grown to enjoy having my own space.  I've never had that before.  Always I have just had a nook in someone else's space. 

When I first got here I found the town rather sleepy.  Not that the Valley is some metropolis, but I have all my family there so not a weekend went by that I didn't have three birthday party's and a quincenera to go to (or at least it seemed that way).  I have a lot of family, but living up to family responsibilities leaves little time for yourself.  Here for the first time in a long time I have been able to go out and rediscover the things I like.  It was very daunting at first since everyone here seems to have known everyone else forever.  I felt like and interloper, and it didn't help that I'm not very social even on a good day, but slowly I have integrated myself into my own little circle.  It's still not a very big one but for me it's an amazing accomplishment. 

I absolutely love my accordion lessons and I'm very fond of my accordion instructor (He hardly asks for anyone to get him a gun anymore when I play!), I have finally got my little house comfortable and to my liking (Okay, except for the paint.  You may be invited to a painting party in early December.), and I have a great group of friends, which is why it pains me to have to think of leaving.  I'm hoping I won't have to, but, like all of us, I am dealing with circumstances beyond my control.  Perhaps, the universe will smile on me and give me more time for myself, more time to make my own life and persue my own interests.  And perhaps, in the end I won't have to make the compromises and sacrificies I keep thinking I will have to make.  At any rate, I refuse to keep living my life as if they are a certainty because nothing is ever certain.  The world does work in mysterious ways and, perhaps, the best is yet to come.