My husband and I have spent the last seven weeks moving. It began with getting the house ready to put on the market and to show. When it sold in two days, we had six weeks to find a place to live more than 350 miles away; prepare for and conduct a yard sale; pack and clean; drive to Asheville; and then attack the monumental task of unpacking and squeezing our already downsized stuff into an even smaller space.
On the subject of moving, I have this advice. Don't do it! It is brutal.
Granted, there are times when it cannot be avoided, and one of those times is when, like us, something deep in your heart requires you to leave. Still, moving is majorly challenging in so many ways.
My second piece of advice is don't move from a three-bedroom house with garage and storage room over the garage to a two-bedroom house with neither. Better still, start getting rid of your excess stuff now in case a move might be in your future.
I think the emotional challenges of moving are pretty straightforward, especially if you have decided that you just want to live in another place. We wanted to return to living in the mountains. We were not forced to go. Inevitably, I had to let go of some people and things I wish I have could taken with me. I had some of the best neighbors possible; a wonderful church family; and a volunteer job as a kindergarten helper with a fabulous teacher and friend and children whom I love. I also hated to leave my hydrangeas.
The list of losses sounds deceptively simple. With each, I left a piece of my heart and entered into a state of anxiety about whom I might meet in my new home and whether new relationships would sustain me as well as the old ones. And, oh boy, am I doing the right thing?
I don't completely know the answer to that question. We love Asheville; we think we will be happy; and I hope those relationships will come in time. Not to replace those dear ones, but to expand my life with new people I hope to meet.
I have experienced two major epiphanies during this move. I started to say I learned two lessons from this move, but "learned" isn't quite right. I have been confronted with information about myself that still bears contemplation and future assimilation and change.
The first is, "Ok, I get it: I am old." My overworked body has screamed this at me for seven weeks now. I don't know what I have been thinking about my age, but the physical labor and stress of moving has nearly finished me off. The day after the truck came and packed us, I finished several tasks in the house and made the wise decision to leave my capable and caring neighbors to finish the cleaning themselves. They are professional housecleaners and could wipe it out more efficiently than I could. I believe this decision saved my life.
I left home about 10 am and arrived at my new house around 6 pm. My body literally felt like I had been beaten with a large stick. I limped into the house whimpering and immediately lay down on my temporary cot bed. It took me about three days to get back up and speak coherently. The enormity of what we had physically done in such a short time settled in my bones and in my joints, and disabled me for a period of time. Why wasn't it just yesterday that I could carry a sleep sofa up a flight of stairs single-handedly? Hyperbole, yes, but a still a real question. I don't have the stamina and strength that I used to have. It's real and where did it go?
Second, no two people (for any reason) should own as much disposable stuff as we did. We had an enormous yard sale; donated a van full of leftovers to the church yard sale; donated stuff to the local thrift store; sold furniture; hauled endless bags of trash to the transfer station; moved a truck load of stuff; and have made two additional trips to Goodwill since we have been here. I feel physically ill thinking of all that stuff we owned. By the end of it, I felt myself wanting to trash perfectly good stuff just so I wouldn't have to find a place to put it. And the shocker is that I don't think I will miss any of it, and I have truly made great strides in letting go of stuff. This includes some emotionally-laden objects that I thought I would always have.
I feel good about this. I feel lighter and unburdened. Someone told me, "Memories are not contained in stuff: they live in your heart." I visited these things as I packed and discarded, and said good-bye. Also, I think I know now that no matter how cute or cheap of self-expressive stuff is, I will only need to purchase it on rare occasions. (And yet, have you seen all the cool stuff they have in Asheville???) Working on it; still in transition.
So, here we are. Gerry, Chili Dog and I. We are beginning something new fairly late in our lives. I'm kind of proud of us, that we followed out dream back to the mountains and it didn't kill us. Still, I have that anxiety about new things. Time will tell.
Looking back over these last weeks, I will just say, "GET RID OF YOUR STUFF NOW!!"
