Thinking

wakefulness is truth

- jodimichelle Leave a comment

I’m writing again. Not blogging … writing. Writing to me is putting pen to paper and opening my wounds for the linen beneath me to change. For the tree pulp and water, for the little blue lines to make sense of.

How appropriate that our last address was on a literal dead end road. I was so scared to leave it, so scared to change it but I was clawing my eyes out trying to convince myself that it would get better.

Life in a fish bowl, in a box that is taped shut, isn’t living.

Here we are in a 2nd floor apartment with a view of trees and buildings and it’s breath taking for me. Healing in all kinds of ways to change the present so we can change the presence. It’s small and the kitchen has absolutely no counter space but we have blankets and chairs and food.

But really, it’s larger than anything I’ve ever had. It’s full of possibility and chance. It’s waiting for me, for us, to make the first move. It doesn’t ask anything of us. Not to mow it’s yard, not to take care of it’s cracks and it’s leaks. We just have to be here.

We just have to breath.

a thought

- jodimichelle 1 Comment

Yesterday I was running some errands which had to do with moving. Getting boxes, going to the bank … running around town. As I was pulling out of the bank I thought to myself “Man it’s fun to be an adult.”**

**Actual thought that went through my mind.

Then I decided I would treat myself to one of McDonalds’ chocolate dipped ice cream cones. Which I never did, by the way. I just decided I could and then I drove away.

That was yesterday. Today I stood next to my washing machine and cried while my two year old boy was watching Sesame Street. I was crossing things off my To-Do list of the day which happened to be “Price garage sale items, basement” … so I was being an adult and staying on task when it hit me.

When I could feel the panic rising I called Aaron and started to sob on the phone while he was in the car with 2 other professional folks. I could hear them through my sobbing – on the other end, sitting near Aaron, having a normal conversation and I am losing my fucking marbles.

It was not fun to be an adult this morning. I got overwhelmed. We are so excited and so very terrified at the same time about moving. Yes, we’re done with this house and have done what we can to it without doing too much and we’re not, in fact, in the school district we thought we were – we’re ready.

But it’s easy. It’s complacent to stay here. To just go on living here, shoving things in the cupboards we don’t use and putting the garage sale off another year. And it’s comfortable. We know the neighborhood, the kids have only ever known this house, we started our life as a family here.

And there’s so. much. to. do. to move.

It didn’t help that Aaron was out of town for a night and I had to carry on conversations about mortgages and banking with people he was originally having the conversation with. I had to jump in and assume that I knew the details of what was already discussed, the ideas that were swapped. It didn’t help that I was solo parenting 2 children and trying to pack up a house, get ready for a garage sale and set up times to see rental homes for the interim.

None of it helped. It was all too much. I caved. I cried. I sobbed.

This house is somewhat of a band-aid for me. The last house my (step)dad saw before he died … he walked through it weeks before he passed. Gave us his blessing, in a way. He got to see where the baby (who is now a 5 1/2 year old female) would be sleeping, she was only 5 months into being formed in my belly.

We went from 900 square feet to this house, 2,400 square feet and all kinds of ideas and dreams. Our income has only changed once since we’ve lived in this house – and that happened within the first year of being here.

We were building our “5 year plan” on the fact that we only ‘planned’ to be here for 3 of those 5 years. We’re going on six. We had another baby here, who is now a 2 year old male and sleeping in what was the office when we bought this house. He is named after Him.

This house, to us, was a stepping stone in the journey of being mortgage free. Buy, fix up and sell until we accrued enough equity to own a home scott-free.

This House.

Just goes to show that a plan is really just an idea – something to be considered. A fluid situation.

I am ready to tear off the band-aid and get going with all of this, but we’re not really changing much other than an address when we leave here and it’s really really difficult to see the silver lining when I’m knee deep in old flatware and pillow forms that I no longer need.

We’re still on a journey, just happens that this leg of it is the Roller Coaster.