A tough move

I realize I'm being ridiculous. Logically, I know I'm being childish, but one of the lessons I've learned in the last few years that's brought me to this place is that knowledge and emotions often have nothing to do with each other. Knowing that I'm being childish isn't stopping me from feeling the way I do.

This is the first place I've ever lived where no one could get to me if I didn't want them to. It's the first place I've ever lived where I felt safe and knew that I could leave something that was hurting me on the other side of the door. It's the first place that I've really felt at home, settled and even slightly stable. It's the first place I've lived that I was able to add another person to the equation and not have it completely undo my life. It's the first place I've lived that I really enjoyed coming home to at the end of the day and didn't have to worry about what sort of disaster would take place once I got there.

Of course I realize these things can't be attributed to the space and structure, but are instead due to work I've done on myself in the last three years. I know this, but it doesn't matter. This has been my safe place; my happy place; my sanctuary from the world for the most important and best three years of my life. I became a new person in this place. And even while I know that I can't attribute the change to the space, I know that the space was integral to that change.

When I moved in, I blessed the apartment and dedicated the space to health, growth and creativity. Those things certainly happened here. Being in this space allowed me to hide, to sit and cry for hours and days, turn up my music and dance like an idiot, sit numbly contemplating every last fuck up I have made, laugh at stupid things all by myself in the middle of the night, scream and yell at thin air, sing at the top of my voice and otherwise completely fucking lose my mind in every way possible.

Which I desperately needed to do.

And it helped. Then I found Jami and she joined me here and, as indicated, it did not completely unravel my life. In fact, it in all ways made my life better. And now it's time for us to move on into a space that allows us to live more like we want to live; a space that's ours (in someone else's house).

But I'm scared. I've been good here. I've been happy here, and safe and healthy in a way that I don't think I've ever been. And there's some stupid part of me that doesn't care how much I know that this isn't about a fucking apartment and is totally afraid that leaving it is going to cause every good thing I've managed to accomplish for myself in the last three years to come completely unraveled. I feel scared and vulnerable and unsettled; for the past month, I've been having dreams that I get home from work and my mother is sitting in my new living room waiting for me. I don't need to be Freud to understand that I don't feel secure in the idea that I can properly protect myself once I leave here.

But it's too late to change my mind. More importantly, I can feel this apartment trying to spit me out. I've accomplished what I needed to here and have outgrown the space; it is time to move on whether I feel ready to or not. But this is hard. As soon as I put the first item in the first box, I won't really live here anymore. I've been putting it off all night, but now I'm going to hit POST and face my bookshelves, box in hand, and promise them better organization in the next place, just like I do every time I move.