towards open waters

moving is having a greater impact on my emotional well-being than i care to admit.

i have been saying goodbye and goodbye and goodbye to all the little things that have made my world for the past 9 years – turks on saturday morning, the shops where i know the owners, the people i see on my way to work whose names i have never known. small things, to be replaced by others – but a settling sadness inescapable when one has had a great love for their neighbourhood at some time in their life (and for most of my time in this place, i have). east vancouver brought me from adolescence into adulthood and has provided a startling and colourful backdrop for so many major events in my life – it’s hard to part with that which has been a support and a comfort, even in all its noise and odour.

48 hours until the movers show up at my door, and i am not quite ready for it. my normally ordered life is strewn about the surfaces of my apartment, and i am in need of procuring more boxes and tape if i am to complete the final acts of packing what bits of my living i have not thrown away.

i am not used to living in such chaos – mine being a life where i have dealt with the disorder of politics and legal incursion by ordering my home so there are no things out of place. control over my home always maintained while everything else slid askew – anchoring me and providing the base from which i engaged with the world struggling.

as i pull apart this home, originally made with darren and then remade on my own, i am erratic in my emotions as though tugging at the corners of my psyche. there are rough memories in this place, like sandpaper scraping the years off in layers of belongings, evoking a woman very much changed in that time. as much as this reminds me of the power i hold in self-sufficiency – i am simultaneously fearful of loss – of freedom, of friends, of love. it is as though moving to a new home, a new town will bring my life collapsing inward, and all of who i have worked towards being will transmogrify into some unrecognizable creature.

but having said that i am not hesitant about what i am doing and have not once questioned my decision to move as i am certain that no matter what it brings, it is a required step in my personal development. i hold great hope this move will bring the respite from the noise and chaos of urban living i need to start moving my life in a different direction.

suffice to say, this is not an easy time these past few days, but i am confident once i actually finish packing and set sail towards uncharted waters this unease will alter and become a peacefulness of new place.