09.10.05
Whew. Moving is the WORST.
Here is just a small example of the mountains of crap that I had to sort through to get packed up:
And that was just from the bathroom cupboard.
But we did it. We made it. We are here in Arizona. Please don�t ever remind me that we have to do it all over again in six months.
Is it HOT. I forgot that heat. The kind that knocks you over when you open the front door. The kind where you can still work up a sweat walking out to your car at ten o�clock at night. But the sunsets are some of the prettiest I�ve ever seen. It�s so strange coming back to live in the city I grew up in. For one thing, it has changed so much. But at the same time, everywhere I go I see memories from my adolescence. Everything around me has the feeling of the past mixed surreally with the present.
It doesn�t take much to stir up the nostalgia in me, and moving back here has done just that. In a way, I don�t like it because it reminds me of who I was back then. I was so self-conscious and worried about what other people thought about me. I was an insecure girl desperately in love with an equally insecure boy who mostly made me feel awful about myself. This is the town where my mother left my father for a man who made our lives hell. Where I left the safety of suburbia and was dragged into someone else�s world of abuse, addiction, and codependency. Where my father got remarried and moved us into a stranger�s house and expected us to feel at home.
Wow. I�m just coming to the realization as I�m writing this that in moving back here, the girl from the past and the woman I am now are getting slightly muddled. I didn�t expect this unpleasant side affect, but it explains a lot. The past week or so, my anxiety has come back with a vengeance. No actual panic attacks yet, just an onslaught of that �sick-to-your-stomach-impending-doom� feeling. I couldn�t understand why I was feeling it so strongly all of the sudden; I attributed it to the stress of the move. But now that I think about it, it�s partly from seeing shadows on every corner reminding me of the most difficult times in my life. At least in recognizing the cause I can start to deal with managing my anxiety. But I might need some therapy to do it. *sad smile*
I like to think that I have all my mental ducks in a nice, tidy row. That I am so introspective and analytical that I have everything figured out. That I have dealt with the hand I was given in life and managed to get past the rough spots in fairly good condition. But perhaps I have suppressed more than I like to think. When I turned 18 I was out the door and 2 states away faster than you could say �university.� I discovered someone within myself away at school�someone that I really liked. Someone that could look back at that time in my life and break it down into something that made a little more sense. But it still hurts sometimes.
Nothing says it more beautifully than that line in Garden State:
Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn�t really your home any more. All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you put your shit that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You�ll see one day when you move out. Just sorta happens one day and it�s gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It�s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn�t even exist. Maybe it�s like this rite of passage, you know? You won�t ever have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself. You know, for your kids. For the family you start. It�s like a cycle or something. I don�t know. But I miss the idea of it, you know? Maybe that�s all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.
We all want �home� to be that permanently safe, happy place. Truth is, that place usually only exists in your mind. But I got through the worst of it. I may be a bit unsettled for the moment, but it�s just from dealing with ghosts. Am I mad about it all? Yeah, I�m pissed as hell about it. But I�m here, despite it all.
I�m here and I�m beautifully flawed because of it.