It’s possible the answer to where and when a story starts has something to do with the space-time continuum, and if it does, I would not be the person to talk about that. I am not a space-time continuum kind of person. I’m more of an arts-and-crafts kind of person, which can be just as serious as space-time, especially if you spill purple glitter (or any other color of glitter) on the carpet.

Pretty serious.

I don’t recommend you do this because then glitter will be in that space between the fibers of your carpet for the time period of for ever.

Of course, sometimes you’re working on a particularly cool objet d’art in your living room because you just moved into a new house and your craft area hasn’t been set up yet and these things can’t be helped.

And now we’re into the story.

It’s already started!

If we’re being picky about it, all this already happened and I’m going back in time to tell you the story of how I became Anne of Greenville (formerly Anne of a Few Cities Other Than Greenville). It’s also the story of how I found my true true, and how I needed to maybe come to Greenville, of all places, to make that happen.

Speaking of Greenville, I should probably set the scene a little. Because if you don’t know Greenville, and arguably, if you don’t live here, you’ve probably never heard of Greenville (I hadn’t), you might need a little wiki info to get you started.

Greenville is a very small town in a state that is about six states to the east of any state I have ever lived in. It’s what Millie, my mom, who was born in a small town called Pepperdown, North Carolina (so cute, right?), calls The Ultimate Small Town. Greenville’s total pop. when we arrived was 5,004 (5,007 once my family moved in—so that sign will need to be changed).

My first impression of Greenville was that it was very, very hard to see anything, because it was night. And night in Greenville is, like, really really dark. I arrived with my two moms in a U-Haul full of mostly books and cooking supplies, as well as our ginger cat, Bjorn, and our golden retriever, Monty. Greenville dark is not like city dark, where every street is lit up by a streetlight, as if you had a house and every room had a lamp on. Greenville felt like a house with no lamp on. Admittedly, when I first looked out the moving-van window at our new town, awakened from an in-van nap by a “we’re almost there,” my heart kind of sank. I felt like I was looking out into the void, and it was looking back at me. And not in a pleasant way.