The last two things I remember about the day I left Knoxville forever were gripping fear and a cameo of my ex-husband’s backside as he stood before the kitchen sink with the tap open. He was washing his hands (metaphorically too, I suppose) while the morning sunlight filtered through the stained-glass window framing him; I hoped with all my might he was bawling, but I could not tell. I have no memory of saying anything except ‘goodbye’ to him, or whether he said anything to me at all. Our house had sold at auction just a few weeks earlier and it was the last day to get out; I left him plenty to do and, aside from it all, was sorry only that I couldn’t squeeze everything I wanted to take onto the big yellow moving truck that was already hours on the road ahead of me. (An entire library of my kiddo’s childhood tomes, my dad’s first-edition copy of The Beatles’ White Album, the elliptical trainer, et al.)

That kiddo was by then a teenager and waiting in the idling Outback when I climbed behind the wheel, and as I nosed slowly and for the last time out of the circular drive that was mine no more, my heart began pounding so hard I swear I could hear it inside my ears. We were headed to Vermont so I could assume a teaching post at a small ballet school in the Upper Valley, with not much more than some loose change rattling around in my pockets, a cashier’s check in a paltry amount that reflected my share of the auction proceeds, and my faithful German Shepherd Clarence riding in the back seat; whether it was truly everything that was rightfully mine I’ll never know.

My son was along for the ride, mainly, and to help some with the move. It felt important to me for him to grasp the extent of miles that would soon stretch out impressively between us, and to know where I would be living and working so he’d have at least some kind of visual to hang onto. In a week’s time I’d put him on a flight back home to his dad, an action that inspired immeasurable grief and heartache that would well up in me again at the end of every rare visit. The words of a beloved mentor had played on continuous loop for some time: You have no choice, but also the words of another: There is no paradise. I am an expert at second-guessing big decisions, and here was the biggest one, or at least as big as marrying or becoming a parent.

Earlier that morning one of my two closest friends pulled into the driveway without my even knowing it, and left a cheerful plaid tote on my car’s front passenger seat; inside it were snacks and fresh iced tea for the road, and in one cupholder she’d left a small lidded container filled with quarters and dimes for toll booths along the way. I know she could not bear goodbyes but her gift spoke volumes and was all I needed and anyway we’d been saying goodbye already for a long time by then.

Aside from the terror it inspired, it infuriated me to no end, this setting sail to a strange new land. If either of us, my ex-husband or myself, could rightfully lay claim to ownership of Knoxville and the hills and valleys of eastern Tennessee, it was I. It was my ancestors who settled in the foothills of the Smokies to farm in the early 19^th century; it had been my great-great-great grandfather who laid the railroad tracks that separated downtown Knoxville from development to the west; and it was my great-grandmother Gracie’s house to see us through the first unsteady years of our married life and to shelter us while we disentangled my ex from a morass of bad fiscal decisions in his early adult life. He could lay claim to a shallow history going back only as far as his high school years, and that is all; his ‘people’ instead had come from middle and west Tennessee. Ironically, soon I’d experience this ‘unrooted’ condition myself as a Vermonter without any ancestry to claim there at all. But at the time the only thing I felt was injustice, insult added to injury.

Months earlier I knew I had to get out of town. I was idling at one of the two traffic signals that served our expansive historic neighborhood and connected us to the city’s main artery, when I noticed a blue compact car in front of me, meaningless until a familiar tatted arm—fully ‘sleeved’—emerged from the driver’s open window and rested on the door frame. That unmistakable arm belonged to my ex’s massage therapist and the woman he’d been sleeping with, who lived in an apartment building only a couple of blocks from our home. At that instant this painful epiphany washed over me: If I stay, I must live in community with you, and others of your ilk (for there had been and would yet be many). I’ll have to look at you when I’m pushing my cart through the aisles at the grocery store or stand behind you in the Starbucks queue or maybe I’ll be seated next to you in a local venue. This will be my life. I’ll have shuttered the hard-earned ballet school I founded only six years ago, and instead will spend my days behind a counter in some local retail outlet asking customers if they need help (no, in spite of my education, I could not see past this gloomy eventuality at the time). And I’ll have to live my life in community with you.

This would never do, and so I quietly began auditioning for teaching posts across the country. But the outcome of a decade living in a beautiful if isolated part of the world has been glory, mine and my now-husband David’s, David who understands me deeply.

A few days ago, I fell down the rabbit hole that is the Wayback Machine, the internet archive that allows you to access a long-gone (or even existing) web domain and then see the results of web pages it captured and saved through time. It did not take long for me to find the ballet school, thence to the mainly dance-themed blog that was my first of several. In short order, I marveled at one post after another documenting the time I spent in pedagogy training at American Ballet Theatre, like poring over boxes of old photographs. Those minutes of browsing not only took me back to an ambitious chapter in my life, but took me there in a way so real I could recall the sounds and smells inside those hallowed midtown Manhattan studios, and even snippets of conversations I’d long forgotten. What a journey, what an adventure. And then to bring it all home to Knoxville—what a dream come true.

This exercise didn’t so much make me wistful for everything I lost in the years following those early two-thousand-aughts, as it made me realize I have been places and experienced things worth documenting, beyond mere blog posts. I’ve often considered, despite my advancing age, surely I am yet too young to write memoirs. I am not a famous or notorious person—who would even care about me or any of my reflections.

Now I am not so sure.