Moving Day

It looks like roughly 24 hours from now, I'll be ready to officially change my residence.

Not that we're ready to move by a long shot. Nothing's packed, parts of the house are a perpetual mess, and we made a plan only yesterday only yesterday regarding how we might move all our stuff. Seriously, I only want to bring about half of it. I imagine a great mound of broken or unused toys, unworn and ill-fitting clothes, broken furniture that made its way to corners of the basement because it was too large for the trash, building scraps, junk mail that has piled up, and general crap that has permeated our household the last eleven years. I suppose now is the time to plan for that long-coveted dumpster I've been fighting for so long. Now is the time to purge.

Of course, this sort of purging is a good thing. Making your house and your life cleaner is a good thing. Moving up in the world is a good thing.

On the surface, this move is just that: a move up. The house is bigger, the neighborhood is better, the city is safer, and the schools preferred. But this seems an empty victory to me. Several small details make me feel that, although facts are this is better for the family, this will not feel right for a long time. I am afraid to tell anyone this--they all seem so happy for us. And I don't want to explain those details; some are embarrassing.

Maybe what I should be doing is focusing on the good parts of this whole deal--and those abound. Just the chance to start over in an empty house is overwhelmingly uplifting to me. The possibility of having more room for concievably less stuff makes me giddy. Having a bedroom door will be a luxury. The ride to work and the kids' school is markedly shorter, which means less driving and gas. The yard is bigger, and although it can't be fenced I look forward to playing with the dogs this summer and planting a bigger garden without crowding the swingset. There are mature trees. There is a garage and a front porch suitable for sitting to watch the rain.

But what I can't shake is the fear that something is terribly amiss. I'm sure my sense of dread is caused more by the typical new year's malaise and my own personal issues than anything real, but for me it's real enough and cannot be ignored. Lately I've had trouble putting to practice lots of the life skills I gained only recently in my adulthood, and this makes coping with the house anxiety even more acute.

SCWA