Personal Truths and Reflections is a monthly series by me. My goal is to learn more about who I am and what defines me, through this series I will talk about truths and lessons I have learned about myself through various things in my life.
Let me start here…remember last week I wrote a post about how crazy I am? And I told you that we are planning to move from Pittsburgh back to Chicago by the end of February. Well, it turns out I lied a little seeing as how when this post gets published I’ll probably be sleeping in the bedroom I grew up in, in the house I’ve known my whole life…back in Illinois living with my parents again.
Honestly, it was a really sudden decision. Last Sunday, Scott and I started talking about it. And by Tuesday night, we had decided that he needed to drive me 10 hours home. And then he drove 10 hours back to Pennsylvania. He (plus our 2 cats and most of our stuff) won’t be actually moving here with me until February like originally planned.
On Moving
I decided to write about moving this month for my Personal Truths and Reflections. A lot of this is a bit rambling, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m learning from moving so far, so fast in my last two moves. But I still felt it was important to write about.
-It’s okay to run.
As long as you know your reasons. Once we decided I would be leaving, aside from all the other reasons I didn’t want to (Scott missing out on 3 weeks of my pregnancy for one)…I had an overwhelming feeling that I was running away. AGAIN. I’ve talked before about my decision to leave art school and that I’m still unsure if it was because I needed to or because I was weak. But deciding to move home early made me feel like I had run away from Boston and now I was running away from Pittsburgh. When I left Boston, I was running away from the loneliness, the isolation and the hurt feelings from my teachers. Now…now I while yes, I am trying to run away from our problems, I am running toward a new beginning. We decided to move in with my parents for a while after the baby was born for a lot of reasons. Support for one. But another was to work on our finances and turn our lives around. I was trying to run away from my panic and anxiety but at the same time I was running toward safety, security, love and a whole new beginning. And I think that’s a good reason to run.
-I hate stuff.
I’ve posted before about my need to purge my life of all my things. And moving always makes me want to purge even more. For this move, I think it was a combination of wanting to just simplify my life and the fact that we’re going to be living in just one bedroom (with 2 adults, 1 baby and 2 cats – though the cats will be living in the basement). We have limited amount of space but a whole lotta stuff. How do others purge? For the most part we have gotten rid of most things we don’t use often. What we have in abundance is things we would like to hold on to. Books we want our child to read some day, art supplies I use, 1 box each for childhood mementos. And yet, we are overrun with things. We got rid of a good bit of furniture but for the most part, didn’t purge as much as I would have hoped. But my hope is that by our next move, we will find a lot more to get rid of. Because if after a year+ we haven’t needed it or missed it…what’s the point of keeping it?
-Our next move will be better.
In 2009, I moved 1000 miles from Illinois to Boston. I was moving away from everything I had known to a strange city to live by myself for the first time. I was scared and doubtful. In 2010, I moved 500 miles from Boston to Pittsburgh. I was moving in with the love of my life, who I had lived long distance from for over 5 years at that point. But I was still scared and unsure because I felt like I was running scared from school, I was doubtful of my decision. This past weekend, I moved 500 miles from Pittsburgh back to Illinois. I was (and am) scared of the timing of my move, of being away from my solid rock and best support, if only for a few weeks, when my depression and anxiety are acting up so severely.
So the last 3 moves, the only 3 moves I have ever made, haven’t always been under the best circumstances, or feelings and attitudes on my part. While I think they were all necessary for various reasons, I don’t like the fact that I went running into them to move so far each time, when I had doubts and fears about each move. So I vow that my next move will be better, I will enjoy it and be thrilled and 100% on board with it. Because I think I need that.
Like I said, this isn’t possible all I have learned from moving the way I have moved the last 4 years. But it’s such a huge event and moment in my life right now that I felt I had to write about it to get my head wrapped around it a little bit. Most of my thoughts above are not as thought out as they could be, I rambled a bit and could probably just keep writing about each point for a while, but I think I got the most important bits out and am starting to understand more about my reactions and thoughts about myself because of my move.
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Don’t forget to check out the guest post series companion to my series, called “Defining Me:Moments and Events that Shaped Who I Am.” and contact me if you are interesting in contributing.
