If you would have told me everything that was going to happen in the past three years, not only would I not have believed you, I probably would have laughed in your face.
In September of 2019, I moved away from the only place I had ever called home to a place that now feels more like home than Red Bluff ever did. At that point in my life, I had never been away from my family for more than a month, I was under the impression that I would graduate from Sierra Nevada College with a Bachelor’s in Journalism, and I did not yet own a single pair of skis.
I am now a twenty-one-year-old whose life practically revolves around ski season, I haven’t been a student in over a year, and the school I originally enrolled in no longer exists.
(There was also a fucking pandemic, but I digress.)
When everyone kept telling me to prepare for my plans to change, this is not what I thought they meant. There is no way I could have predicted most of the things that have occurred in the past three years. Nonetheless, if given the opportunity, I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently.
Of all the decisions I have made, moving to Incline Village, Nevada was among the best. Between September of 2019 and May of 2022, I have met some of the most wholesome people from all around the world that are now closer to me than family. I have been to places I would have never considered visiting before, which in turn has made me rethink where I can picture myself living. I’ve completely shifted my perspective and redrawn out my life plan more times than I can count. I have cried my eyes out, laughed my ass off, listened, ached, worried, and learned.
It’s one thing to get out of your hometown, but it’s another to feel fully comfortable somewhere new.
When I lived in Red Bluff, as unhappy as I was, I wasn’t ready to leave. Before going to college, the farthest I had ever moved was from the upstairs bedroom to the downstairs bedroom. I knew Red Bluff wasn’t where I was wanted to stay forever, but I had grown an ugly codependency for this place I hated so much.
If I waited until I was “fully ready”, if I had waited for the closure that I thought I needed, I probably would have never left.
Leaving was the best thing I ever did.
Incline Village will always feel like home to me, because it’s the first place I felt like I belonged. I got out of my shell and developed into a much better version of myself than I ever could have been in my hometown.
As I was moving out of my apartment in May, I knew I wasn’t ready to leave Tahoe. I finally found a beautiful place where I was comfortable in my skin, where I had a solid group of people I loved. I had made some of the best memories in this town, so I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. The closer we got to the end of our lease, the more lost I felt. I was grasping for a sense of closure that I could not find.
I needed more time, just a little. I needed one more month.
So I went back.
I spent the past month doing everything I could possibly fit into a day, refusing to waste a second. When I lived there previously, I kept telling myself things like: “I have more time” “I’ll do that later” “I’m too busy” “I don’t have time right now” “Maybe when the season is over”
If you look at life that way, you will never find the time. I learned this later than I should have, but better late than never I guess.
When I went back this time, I went out more, I reached out to people, I said yes to everything. I spent every available moment trying to tie up loose ends. This time around, I was so much happier that when the time came, I actually felt ready to leave.
As much as I love Incline and the people in it, I have come to realize that it’s not what I need anymore.
My seventeen-year-old self desperately needed change, and she got it. That broken, naive girl had no idea what she was in for. Since moving to Tahoe three years ago, I have endured some of the most heartbreaking and emotionally draining experiences that I didn’t know I needed to mature. As terrible as that sounds, I have also never been as happy as I am now, all because of the person I became throughout my time there.
I owe so much of my personal growth and newfound confidence to this little town in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the beautiful souls I found within it.
To Incline Village and the friends I made while I was there, you mean more to me than you know.
I don’t know what’s next. I’ll let you know when I figure it out.
All my love,
Kristin
love always, kristin 
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