Moving On

Moving is the absolute worst. That's all.

For the first eighteen years of my life, I didn’t move once. I experienced stability I didn’t even know I was going to miss so dearly later on in life. Never did I have to pick up and decide what came and what I left behind. Never did I have to learn a new address, or a new phone number, or find new friends at a new school. My life was so stable I eventually sought out change. Moving my bedroom to the sun room downstairs, with zero privacy, but I so desperately needed to feel something different. Be something different. It didn’t take too long for me to realize my move was somewhat foolish. I think the final straw for me was watching the garbage man pee on the side of our house while I was trying to pretend I was asleep in my bedroom with a wall of windows. I moved back to my old bedroom pretty quickly after that.  

But I knew stability, and I didn’t value it. I had no idea how lucky I was. Now, on my 21^st move in 24 years, I miss it. I miss being in one place. And this time it feels a little harder. The corners are a little rougher. My desire for change is all but gone, and all I want now is stability. I guess the grass is really always greener on the other side.  

How many times do I have to pick up my whole entire life and start all over again? Try to decide what goes, what stays, and what I want this new place to be. I have to look at all the pieces of my life under a microscope and try to decide what I need and what I don’t. And I’m tired. I’m tired of moving, of changing, of evolving, I want a rest. Maybe that’s what’s next. Maybe that’s what my new “home” is. Creating my own stability that I don’t have to rely on anyone else to maintain or keep. It gets to be mine, and all mine. Finally, I will get to reap what I sow. Get to create something for myself, that is my own and protect it and my own peace so very fiercely.  

Maybe moving is so hard because a large majority of them have also been simultaneously the end of yet another failed relationship. It feels like a failure. At least it did at the time. Now I see so clearly it was all necessary. To get to where I am today. And even in the midst of chaos, in my rough, hard, messy parts, I am so in love with where I am. I am so capable of making this move. I have come so far, and while I still have a long way to go, I’m so much closer than I ever have been. Closer to finding myself. Closer to being myself. Closer to loving myself. I love myself so much. Mess and all. I am proud of myself for how many times I have said, this is no longer serving me, and moved on. This is no different. Except it is. Because I feel like I finally got it now.  

Everything that I was looking for my whole entire life is right in front of me. It’s me. I was the answer all along. I was the love I was looking for. And now... when I finally get out of this house, the house that reminds me once again of another failed relationship, but also reminds me why it did and that there’s something far better on the other side of it all.