This is probably way more than you need but I'm at work and bored. Skip the first 4 paragraphs if you want the important parts. Also using a throwaway because this is a lot of personal info haha.
After college I moved back to the Cincinnati suburbs with my family to save money. My father's career with Coca Cola took some interesting turns and he ended up with a new position in Lubbock, TX. I decided to go with them more out of necessity than anything else, and unfortunately was still a terrible CA at this point.
Lubbock was alright, and actually more fun than I had anticipated (Texas Tech helps with nightlife) and I ended up dating a bartender from the hotel I worked at. We moved in together in Lubbock and not long after she ended up getting a teaching job in Marshall, TX. I moved with her and was happy to be surrounded by trees and grass again. My drinking had slowed drastically by this point, mostly due to my girl, and us smoking weed all the time.
I had a job at a chain of headshops that pushed thousands of dollars in synthetic pot on a daily basis. It paid alright and I did whatever I wanted but it was incredibly depressing and my coworkers were a bunch of idiots who smoked the shit. We slowly grew apart, she stressed from teaching music at a poverty-stricken elementary, and I spending time with the bottom of society's barrel. She also wanted marriage and kids, and I knew our relationship wasn't strong enough, not to mention we had very little in the way of time or money.
When we inevitably decided to part ways, I took some time to evaluate my options. I could stay in the Marshall/Longview area and get my own place, I could try to move back in with my parents in Lubbock (although I had been a blackout mess with them a lot and didn't want to burden them with their drunk ass kid in his mid-20s), or I could look in a totally new direction and venture off by myself.
Cannabis had been a huge factor in my ability to deal with anxiety attacks and alcohol abuse and Colorado had legalized it the month before our split. I decided I didn't want to venture too far from family, and the other states around Texas had no appeal to me at all. I picked a random city someone had mentioned to me months ago (Colorado Springs), and left anything that didn't fit in the car with me. I had about $2,000 and drove the 14 hours or so to Colorado. I got in to town at night and got a hotel room and started looking for jobs and apartments.
Unfortunately I found a cheap ass apartment for $425 before I found a job, so they wanted 3 months upfront. I signed the lease and started freaking out a bit, I don't like not knowing where my next paycheck is coming from and here I am with 90 days to get my shit together. Fortunately it wasn't long until I got ahold of hotel downtown that was hiring and landed a nice low-paying gig to go with my shitty apartment.
I spent a year with no furniture, no bed, eating Ramen in a roach-infested shithole. It was rough. It was so fucking worth it. I had never lived alone, never learned to budget well alone, and it was probably the most important experience of my life. A year later I have a much better place in Manitou Springs, some furniture, some friends, I only blackout every couple months or so. Independence has made me more content than I could have ever possibly imagined. I'm looking in to starting my career at a local newspaper (there's a small publisher within walking distance of my apt which would be ideal) and maybe even another serious relationship, although I'm in no rush to fuck up my independent streak. I tend to lose parts of myself to relationships and even roommates. Being alone right now still feels like the healthiest thing to me, we'll see what happens.