Moving Out & Moving Forward

It’s been ten days in my new city.

Two weeks since the first of four moves in four days.

First out of our summer house, then my childhood home, then my college apartment.

And now into my new apartment, my new home, in Charlotte.

In recent years I’ve become someone who loves and, honestly, craves change. I’ve been listening to the song “Wide Open Spaces” by The Chicks lately and that sort of sums it up. Since embracing change I’ve seen the joy that comes from making mistakes and forging new paths. My first big change, moving to South Carolina, proved to be the best decision I could have possibly made, but the time had come for another new and exciting chapter of change: post-grad!

It's hard not to think about the thousands of times you heard about the pains of “adulting” and fear of getting older as you approach this kind of transition period. Whenever someone asks you about your plans after graduation it feels underlined with a layer of cynicism and impending doom, like they’re all in on something that we will soon understand. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the monotony of corporate life and how this enforced structure can feel limiting and bleak compared to the wild and craziness of college. But for some reason, just as with college, I’ve embraced this change with excitement far more than nervousness or dismay. I think I’ve always been quite the independent person, sometimes too much so, but I tend to view each phase of my life so far as unlocking new freedoms and abilities. In this new phase, I have one of the biggest freedoms: money. A paycheck coming in from a job I worked really hard to get that pays for an apartment all to myself that I get to decorate and live in and host friends at. It gives me the ability to establish roots in a new city and bring structure back to my daily routine that I enjoy so much. The past ten days I’ve spent a lot of time just looking around like “wow, I actually live here. I actually did this.”

But trust me, the moving process took its toll. If it weren’t for a few calls to mom pre/mid-mental breakdown, much needed breaks connecting with friends, and the man from the mailroom who helped lift the box with my couch into the backseat, I’m not sure what I would’ve done. Moving just has this tendency to bring out all the emotions in a person and it feels like a terrible remake of Inside Out as all my different brain characters fight for the controls. One second I’m crying over sentimental notes I’ve saved over all of college in my desk drawer, the next I’m wanting to kick my bedframe because I screwed in the legs too tight and I just can’t twist the Allen wrench anymore. Then you add in the back pain from bending over and carrying boxes that are way too heavy given how long it’s been since I last properly worked out, plus a bit of sleep deprivation and starvation and the overwhelming need for a nice, hot shower. All this to say, moving in and of itself is not very fun.

The good part about moving is it reminds you of all the love that you have in your life. Although I’ve gotten quite used to leaving my hometown over the past four years, it’s different when you know you’re leaving for the indefinite future, or possibly, for good. Especially when you’re like me and you’ve lived in the same house for the entirety of your life, and a good chunk of your family is within a ten-mile radius. I was blessed with a big, crazy, Irish Delco family, and they hold a lot of what’s good about home. They’ve seen me grow up and cheered me on despite it meaning I was leaving yet again. I’ve been appreciating all of my family a lot more recently now that I’ve wrapped my head around the fact that you only get one and soon I’ll be promoted to the next generation (..not too soon though). It’s weird to think about becoming a wife and a mother and an aunt and all of the new titles I will have one day, but that’s the weird part about this stage of life: those become your new milestones. No longer are there any first days of class or winter breaks or graduations, instead engagements and weddings and babies. Not that I’m in any particular rush for any of those to happen, but it’s true, it’s the only measurement we really have now. Some people my age have already checked off one or multiple of these, and some won’t for another ten years or possibly ever. It’s impossible not to wonder how these next years will play out for me and my closest friends, how different our paths and our timing will be. I quite like my path and my timing.

This summer felt like the perfect conclusion to my time at home—hopping between Pennsylvania and the beach, reconnecting with old friends, and spending quality time with those I love most. When I went back to therapy at the start of this year, I told my therapist that one of the last things I wanted to do was to get over my resentment for my hometown. As much as I loved college, for a while it felt like an escape act from the person I once was and the place I once knew. I blamed my hometown for the way I felt at 17 and the people that were mean to me and all the bad I felt in the world. I thought if I could just thrive at college it would be the perfect act of “I showed them”, and honestly, it kind of was. This winter break I went to the bars in my hometown for the first time and was surprised by how distant I felt from all the old classmates I ran into, how little I cared about their opinion of me anymore. It felt like freedom. I realized, resenting my hometown was only taking up unnecessary energy and I could release myself of that weight. I could learn to love it again as I had learned to love myself. From there, I had the perfect summer at home filled with many trips to Wawa and plenty of sun. I drove around the backroads blasting old songs and looked out fondly on the town that shaped me into who I am now. I cheered on my favorite sports team since I was little and felt the pride of where I’m from as the fans sang throughout the ballpark. I had accomplished my last big goal, and with that, I was ready for whatever came next.

So, here I am. New city, new apartment, new job, and a new chance to start fresh (with the help of some lessons learned along the way). A part of me still can’t believe this is real, but the rest of me couldn’t be more excited.

To many adventures yet to come.