Moving and Me

No, I'm not moving. Thank goodness, what a terrible ordeal. Some friends of mine are moving, closer to us, actually, which is pretty awesome. But it has made me think about all the times I've had to move. It's never been fun. Sure, there have been fun moments (although they're all escaping me at the moment) but overall it's a rough experience.

The first time I remember moving was in between elementary and grade school. My dad's back was in bad shape at the time, so we got a lot of friends to help us. I mostly remember being very excited that the house we were moving into was going to be ours, we were going to own it instead of renting. Why this is important to a nine-year-old, I'm not sure, but it was.

We moved again three years later, before I entered high school. We bought the house of some people we sort of knew, and I don't know what the reason was, but they left a ton of their stuff in the house. In this way, we inherited jackets, small furniture and even a car (it was old - but who leaves a car?). The move itself wasn't traumatizing, I'm sure they didn't have me do too much manual labor, but this time I was a teenager and moving far away from my friends. Heartbreaking.

Then, of course, I had to move for college. And then back home for the summer. And then back to school. The next summer I spent living with friends in LA. Back to school. Then in LA again, this time at an apartment where I sublet a room. Back to school. Then back to the same apartment (getting that call to tell me I could move back there again was so awesome). Then I moved in with my boyfriend at the time about a year after that. Lived there for three years before we broke up and I moved in with a friend. That move was one of the hardest. I had no furniture, save for a desk, which my new roommate did help me move. But everything else I did on my own. No one to help, a recently broken heart and it was so hot, I remember. And there was a fire burning in LA nearby. So sitting in an un-air conditioned car with a ton of belongings, with smoke in the air. Rough. But once I was settled in my apartment, starting over felt really good.

And then my last move, into an apartment with my now husband. Not terrible. I do remember trying to lodge my mattress into the top of the truck and yelling at my then-boyfriend and people passing by and him being embarrassed, plus it was starting to rain. But I knew that they'd shrug it off and agree that moving is hard. It's stressful. But in the end, it's nice to find a place for everything, finally get everything up on the walls and sleep in a new room that's going to be yours for (hopefully) a long time.