The house is nearly empty, and my husband has already flown to North Carolina to begin his new position. His first day was Monday and since then he's spent time finding places to eat, learning the new rhythm of the office there, and exploring our new "home."
I am in Oregon, stuck in a house that is nearly empty, but a total mess. I have so much to do, but every day is an uphill battle. In typical fashion, I'm the one handling every aspect of our move, but this time it hurts so much more because I do not want to move. We close on our house there in 8 days and I still don't want to move there. This is not what I wanted. I'm literally making the best of it. I'm doing what I have to do in order to take care of my kids and keep food on their table. The garage has tons of stuff in it that I have to have hauled away as donations. I refuse to have another yard sale, so I'm just getting rid of it all. I can't go into the garden because all I feel is guilt -- I can't water easily because the pump isn't working (we were going to get it worked on in the spring, and here we are), but I can't stand to watch everything die. I have no idea when someone might move in, and will they water anything? Will they care about the garden? I have no idea. So, add the garden to everything else I'm abandoning here. It is not in my nature to abandon anything. I'm the one who will buy the last beautiful blue mug on the shelf so the merchandisers resetting the store's kitchen section don't have to take it back because it hasn't sold yet. I still have that mug and I still love it. We have six cats now because when we visited the shelter, Teddy climbed into my arms and refused to let me put him down. I have friends who have left me behind for years, but if they come back, I am ready to listen to their tales and let them back in -- because there's always room for more love, more growth. But now I'm abandoning everything I built here. I've thrown away all of my plans and notebooks and business cards. I've closed the website for Rosemary Hill Gardens, I'll never have a lavender farm, a cut flower garden, chickens, bees and their honey, none of it. It's all gone. Thinking about gardening in the new home just makes me angry. Why should I bother bringing home any plants, only to plant them and leave them in the future? How many gardens have I left behind at this point? What IS the point? What is the point of anything I did here? None of it makes sense. I'm 56 and starting over again. Why. So, after a really enlightening therapy session yesterday, some things have become incredibly clear. Nothing is permanent. And things could always be worse. Give it to God -- whatever your idea of God is, just give it over. Give it to the Universe. Give it to Sasquatch. Just give it. My animals will continue to live their lives, my plants will live -- or not. I can't change any of this. I can only focus on what I have control over -- my mind, my hands, and what I do with my time. Another thought -- I'm just bored with moving. I'm bored looking up places to go, places to eat and see when we get there. I just really don't care anymore. The town we're moving to is devoid of any good restaurants, and other than the discount-everything stores, there's a Walmart and a Starbucks. So I will be in our house unless I want to drive 90 minutes to the nearest decent large town. And I don't like large towns -- the traffic, not knowing where I'm going, and the bustle. Small towns are more appealing, but the small town we're moving to happens to be one that no one has invested in. Apparently, everyone who lives there also drives away to do anything normal. But I can't fix that. And I'm not going to open an actual coffee shop, or a bookstore, or anything like that. I'm not doing anything there that is permanent, because I'm only staying there long enough to build a nest egg that I'll use to get out of there. My husband's company says that might be in 3 years, 5 years, or whenever... bottom line, they have no idea. They don't know, so he doesn't know, which means I don't know when I might get my moving orders and can finally come back to the Pacific Northwest. My future is wrapped up in the whims of a company I don't even work for. How on earth did this happen? Never in a million years did I think I would have to move to the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, so the whole thing is still blowing my brain up. The list of places I would rather live is extensive, but that doesn't matter, apparently, because I don't have the money to make any choice other than where his job takes us. I'm happy for him. It's a great job. They appreciate him, his work, and he's good at his job. But that doesn't negate the fact that my entire life, everything I love, everything I was working on, was literally thrown in the fucking garbage. One thing that came out of my therapy session yesterday was that I am not looking forward to meeting anyone there. Why? Because they're going to assume I want to be there, that it was my choice to move there, that there's something about where they live that sounded good to me and that's why I agreed to move there. Then I'll be faced with the problem of -- do I lie to them and tell them everything is just great? Or do I stand in my truth and tell the that no, I'm not happy with the move, I'm not "excited" and I'm literally making the best of it. Is it my job to make sure they have a good day while my life was just pitched in the trash so I could move there? That I traded everything ... EVERYTHING ... in exchange for room, board, and healthcare in a town that has nothing to offer me? Even writing this down, I realize the enormity of my loss doesn't translate to the page. It reads like I am complaining, but I'm just stating the facts -- I was tossed away, because I had no other choice but to go along with yet another move for his job. I am looking at starting over again, at the age of 56, and I'm just fucking DONE with that. Done. I want to have a home where I know that if I plant a blueberry bush, I'll actually be able to pick blueberries from that bush someday for my oatmeal. I don't think that's too much to ask of the world.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorHello, I'm Cynthia. Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|