I Blame Fairfax

H pointed out to me recently, that if it weren’t for buying his townhouse in Fairfax, he never would have lived with his high school buddy who blogs.  He never would have gone to a blogger happy hour downtown with said buddy, and met Mrs. J.  Had he never met Mrs. J, he wouldn’t have taken her advice and posted an ad on Craigslist looking for, well me essentially, but we’ll call it love in general.  And of course, without that ad on Craigslist, we never would have met. (UNLESS you factor in the freak possibility of meeting becauseI had met his high school buddy through blogging as well years before and there is a SLIGHT possibility that we could have someday met ourselves.  OR the fact that I also knew Mrs. J through blogging as well and met her again through Weight Watchers again a few years later.  But that’s just it’s a small blogworld in DC afterall kinda stuff!)  Basically, he was able to tie the purchase of his home in Fairfax directly to the establishment of our relationship.  I will give Fairfax that.  And that’s it.

I blame Fairfax.  For pretty much, well everything these days.  Weight gain?  Fairfax.  Car broken?  Fairfax.  My lack of exercise?  Fairfax?  Global warming?  Okay, I won’t go that far, but I bet I could get crafty a la H and find a reason why Fairfax is at least partially responsible.  I mean all those people driving their cars into the city for work?  That ain’t good for the environment!  BLAME FAIRFAX!

My life changed dramatically last May when I left my rented Arlington townhouse, home for 5 wonderful, growth filled years to move in with the love of my life.  So in reality, it was a truly wonderful thing that brought me to Fairfax, Farfax or Guam, as it is also known to me.  Folks I’m practically in Chantucky (Chantilly)!   And our relationship has grown and changed in so many ways in the past year.  It wasn’t easy at first, the relationship thing and that whole LIVING WITH A BOY thing.  But this isn’t a post about H and I and yet I am SO glad that we moved in together when we did and got to learn even more about each other before we get married.  No surprises left now!

I can tend to be a little dramatic.  But I think it is an honest, not overly dramatic statement to say that Fairfax has sucked the life out of me.  The wind that has blown so strongly through my sails for the past few years doesn’t quite reach Fairfax.  I think it is afraid of crossing the border beltway.  And it isn’t H’s house.  His townhouse is BEAUTIFUL.  It is huge, much too big for just the two of us, and thus filled to the brim with things we don’t necessarily need.  But it is a delightful home.  If I didn’t think our neighbors would mind, I’d pick his place up and bring it 30 miles in and be pleased as pie.  Anyone want to donate some land in Arlington and perhaps massive amounts of plastic wrap (for the two walls that I’d surely have to leave behind!)?

I came to this area to go to college in the city.  After college, it was clear that I couldn’t afford to live in the city, it didn’t work for me at that time.  Finding a place in Arlington that I loved so much was totally a gift.  A location that I had once turned my nose up at when looking for a place to live with roomies after college (literally, I freaked out and said I would never live so far outside of the city, they said I scared them and our friendship essentially ended.  Though we are totally FaceBook friends now!).  I learned to love Arlington and my little Cpike neighborhood.  It took no time to get right downtown, 15 minutes to get to work which didn’t involve any highways and life was great.  I loved it.  I always thought that my next move would be into DC, but Arlington had grown on me so much, that staying there wasn’t a bad idea either.  When the decision to live together was made, moving to Fairfax made the most sense, and afterall, couldn’t I learn to love it just as I had learned to love Arlington? And so I moved all of my worldly possessions to Fairfax.

Except, I think I left part of my heart.  Clearly, the majority of it came with me, it drove the moving van (or was that the day laborers we picked up on Four Mile Run?).  My heart has been full nearly every day I’ve lived in Fairfax because I’m living there with the man I love and with whom I intend to spend the rest of my life.  But a tiny piece of me stayed in Arlington.  It would pop up in snarky moments, making comments about needing a passport to get outside of the beltway and joking about border guards and such.  Joking, to mask the pain.  But mostly, that little part of me, my get up and go, my drive, the part that I had worked so hard on for the past three years, the part that always put me first, stayed behind and got lonely, and sad.  I know I never brought that part of me to Fairfax because not once, in nearly 11 months, have I opened my front door with my running shoes laced up and gone for a run in my neighborhood.  Something that I had grown so accustomed to doing in my Cpike nook of the world two or three times a week.  In the past 11 months, during which I trained and completed a marathon, I took my running shoes elsewhere, often back to Alexandria and DC to do my runs.  I never christened my new neighborhood if you will. 

It has just never felt right – driving “home” to Fairfax.  And driving we do.  Two hours in the car to and from Old Town for each of us (not commuting together because it just doesn’t work) – so four hours a day lost total for us combined.  That’s 20 hours a week and 80 hours a month.  And the thing is, I never feel home until after I’m safely locked up inside our sweet townhouse and in H’s arms.  Fairfax just isn’t home. 

I know that there  is alot more to my little weight gain than moving to Fairfax.  I am sure it actually has a lot to do with settling into a relationship and changing my life to revolve around 2 instead of 1.  There are a million reasons I could come up with for that, all or most at least partially true.  But two hours of commuting each day – that is at least an hour and a half lost that I used to spend on ME.  Doing ME things and being ME.  Working out (living in Fairfax involves getting up an extra hour earlier to workout and still make it to work on time), reading magazines (seriously, I have like four months worth of back issues) and don’t even get me started on how annoying it is to try and calculate social events downtown around living 40 minutes from downtown (without traffic!).

It has finally weighed down on both H and I to the point where something has to change.  And while I can’t convert my love to a DC city boy, he doesn’t think it would be so bad to live in Arlington.  So after a great deal of discussion, dreaming, frustration and two hours on Sunday with a mortgage officer, we are looking for a condo in Arlington.  We are very excited and a little nervous too.  Our plan will be to rent the Fairfax house out until the market turns around and we can sell it.  In the meantime, we will move to a very modest condo in Arlington.  It will likely be half the size of his townhouse and not nearly as nice – it may not even have a washer and dryer in unit!  The horror!  Trust me, the idea of carrying two mortgages when I can’t afford car repairs is beyond daunting, but we think we have it all worked out.  And that little piece of me that I left in Arlington is starting to flicker again.  We are ready for the next chapter and I’m ready to feel 100 percent whole again.

I blame Fairfax for pushing us towards this next step in our lives.  I’m ready to go home.