We are moving. Again. This time the move won't require plane tickets or putting hundreds of miles on our car, but it will require the usual boxes and organizing and me running around like a crazy person and falling asleep in the shower. It is a happy move, but a move all the same. We are once again going from living in an apartment to owning a home. Like I said, this is a HAPPY move.
I have basically moved every year of my 20s. It has sort of become my way of life and until recently I always thought I was ok with moving. Part of me actually enjoyed living in the chaos because it was a break from the mundane. I liked making lists and organizing and rearranging and thinking about having a clean slate someplace new. I like the process of settling into a new place. I have always been a mover.
The move last year though, from Kansas to Chicago, was different. This move did not carry any of the freshness, any of the joy my moves usually bring me. I found myself hating the process and hating what the process represented (leaving family and friends again). The move exhausted me and so did the subsequent year. I never settled into this apartment and I never wanted to. I had a terrible attitude about where we lived this year and I felt complete emptiness and it surprised me. Moving, settling into new places had always been my thing. I am nothing if not adaptable, dammit!
I think I've finally reached my moving quota or at least very nearly have. After maybe the most depressing (AND LONGEST) winter of my life, we decided we needed to actually make a decision about where we were going to live and stick with it. Part of it was having two kids and realizing I didn't want to be moving with them all the time. I want them to have the same stability I had growing up. I want their memories to be of one place, not a new place each year. I also realize I want the same for myself. I'm tired of uprooting every year. I'm tired of packing and unpacking my life. I'm tired of buying furniture to fit one space and having to sell it the next year because it no longer works or fits in my life.
It's possible that I've finally reached the season of settling in. I never thought it would happen and more importantly I never thought I would WANT it to happen. Here I am though, buying a house and planning to be here for the foreseeable future. And I'm excited about it. I want to be still for a good long while in this new home.
So here's to new seasons in life and REST.
