Moving on my mind
Moving: Does it ever get easier?
A close friend recently decided she was moving pretty far, pretty fast. She had a studio apartment, so she figured it wouldn’t take too long to sell, donate, pack and store her stuff.
She had plenty of time … until Facebook Marketplace shoppers didn’t follow through and, once she started opening drawers, she had more stuff than she realized.
Suddenly, her flight was days away and, because she didn’t think she needed help, she hadn’t asked for it. It was the weekend and her friends were busy — they’d already made plans.
The pressure mounted and her cool had worn off.
I was a few hundred miles away, but offered to try to talk her through it. Through my spotty cell service, I heard her beat herself up for not planning things better.
She wondered aloud what was wrong with her: why didn’t she comprehend how much work this would be? Why didn’t she give herself more time? Why didn’t she enlist help sooner?
“This is how it always goes,” I said, trying not to sound as callous as I felt sitting in the one area of the room that wouldn’t cut off the call. “No matter how many times you move, there’s always more stuff than you think there is and it always takes longer than you expect.”
She lamented: WHY?!
She was in the middle of the chaos. I tried to help her focus on the present — on the immediate. I encouraged her to take a moment to reward herself with a coffee, smoothie, a Frappuccino, a Mountain Dew Baja Blast, a RedBull — something that, with each sip, could keep her in the present, on the task at hand.
I have been where she was. I think most of us have. Moving is incredibly stressful. Change is stressful. Even good change is stressful.
“Some people seem to have it together,” she said. “Some people can do it. I can’t do this.”
“First of all, you can do this,” I said. “You will do this. You don’t have any other choice. And the only people who don’t feel this way during a move are probably the ones with enough money to pay movers to do it for them,” I offered.
“I do know someone who just did that,” she said.
I’ve moved a lot in my life — nearly every two years as an adult and, at times, more frequently than that as a kid. There were moves we didn’t know were coming. We just had to throw everything in trash bags and pile it into the car. There were beloved objects lost, like the large blackboard left forever in an attic that now belongs to a stranger. I hope someone used it, someone loved it like I did, that some other little girl learned the alphabet on it, just like me.
Then there were times when the moving was done for us: the boyfriend who put all our stuff on the curb when he argued with my mom. There was the dog who, while we weren’t home, got tied up to the railing of the front stoop.
There was rain.
There was no time to grieve that blackboard, no time to say goodbye to friends, no time to be sad. Besides, it would have just added to the guilt and pressure I’m sure my mom was already feeling.
Moving is stressful.
There’s the logistics of what to do with your stuff, how long you need, who will be there to help you, and does the city trash take mattresses? Then there’s the part that so often doesn’t get dealt with: the people.
How often do we get the chance to have a goodbye bash? What’s normal, I think, is that we have the good intention of having a coffee with every person who impacted us, to have a drink with our closest friends, and to tell our mentors how important they have been to us. Rarely do we get the chance.
There’s no time. There’s no time because we didn’t plan for it. And, even if we did, plans go awry. It rains.
Instead, we plan to keep in touch. We plan to visit.
I’ve built up a resiliency to moving. I’m incredibly attached to my belongings yet, at any moment, ready to lose them forever. I try to plan my moves the best I can. I have gotten better at prioritizing seeing my friends and my favorite places. Still, there is always more to do and, on the last day, when all my perfectly organized boxes are in the car, the last bits of my life are, again, thrown haphazardly into trash bags.
I know the rain is still inside me waiting.
When I lived alone I was safe. Living with someone else — depending on someone else — you never know if the next time you come home, you’ll be locked out. You never know if they gave everything back. You’ll never get the chance to check the cabinet for your favorite mug or the closet for that scarf your best friend gave you.
It can feel very sad to see this in myself, like I am doomed to a life without trust. Instead of blindly trusting another, though, I choose trust each morning. I reassure myself of all the love I have in the world and all the evidence I’ve gathered up to this point. The bulk of my trust, however, lies within me: that I have built this life on my own, that I have such wonderful friends and mentors — people who will help me move — because of the person I’ve grown to be. I trust that I’m loved, that I’m resilient and can handle whatever comes. And, if I lose everything, I trust that I can build that life again.
Starting from scratch isn’t my preference. More boxes, more trash bags, and looking at apartments isn’t something I want to do in the future. I’m not immune to that feeling of overwhelm that comes with moving. I have built a foundation of self-compassion, though, that until my friend has built her own capacity for self-compassion, she can borrow mine. Until she grows more confidence in herself, I will have confidence in her.
I knew she could get through it — and she did. And, one day, when the one struggling with another move is me, I know I’ll get through it too.
Compassion. Pass it on.