The latest chapter in the saga of this life of mine has me moving into the condo where I will spend the next six months. I’m still kind of in shock at the whole development. But, as is often the case, there’s always more…

Of all the things that have taken place over the last six or seven months, I’ve been assuming that moving out of the house where the atmosphere had become so… so…—I don’t even have the word for it—would be a massive relief. Leaving the place where everything had fallen apart—where I was increasingly doing my own thing, yet did not feel free to be completely myself—should have felt as though I were free of the oppressive weight I’d been carrying for far, far too long.

Instead, as I drove off with my two cats and the last of the possessions I was taking with me, I felt anything but relief. My heart raced, it felt harder to breathe, and the cats’ constant meowing seemed to amplify the mounting anxiety I was feeling.

I had been worried about uprooting them from the relatively large space in which we’d been living (the house) to the relatively small space (the condo) where were going. I knew the move was coming, but their first real clue (despite the suspicions raised by the packing and moving of boxes and furniture) would be when they were suddenly pushed into the travel carriers in which they’d endure the 35-minute drive.

Really, though, the fact is that this move had filled me with anxiety. Correction: it has filled me with anxiety. There is a combination of endings and new beginnings involved that I still have to sort through. I have to unpack boxes of stuff that I will undoubtedly have to re-pack in less than six months, in anticipation of another move to yet another new space. I have to deal with the dissolution of a relationship that really ended more than two years ago—but will live on for at least another year in the form of a property sale, court proceedings, and tax returns. And I still have to figure out a way to use my various skills and talents to earn a steady income.

The stupid thing about all of this is that too much of it is inside my own head. Obviously, I need to find a way to make peace with all of this—to be grateful for the good things that have happened, and to live for today, in the moment, without succumbing so much to worrying about what might happen tomorrow, or what other people might (or might not) do.

It’s always something, isn’t it?

(January 7, 2013)