For much of my life I have believed I was born in the wrong geographical region of the United States. A mountainous desert valley that scorches in the summer and freezes in the winter is not my ideal place to reside. I'm not a nature girl. I believe I really should have been born on a coast.
For years and years I took biannual trips to the California coast. We spent a lot of time in Carlsbad when I was young, and we slowly graduated to Newport Beach once we got older... and after the Carlsbad trip of 2003 when everyone except me got sick. Three weeks after returning to Utah, my kidneys failed for no reason. That was the last time for almost a decade we stayed in Carlsbad.
I always wanted to live in Southern California with the palm trees and beaches and traffic jams. It wasn't until after I stopped driving that I realized California is a car state, just like Utah. It's possible to get around without a car, but it's less pedestrian friendly. Happenstance led me East in my later twenties and I realized I wasn't just born in the wrong geographical region, I was born on entirely the wrong side of the country.
