to move or not to move?
It’s March and spring has arrived - or is trying to arrive, doing its best just like us all. It has been bright outside this week, and mostly bright inside. March is my birthday month, the month our toddler turns 18 months, which is insane and amazing, and the month we’re going to decide the next chapter of our lives. Or, at least, hopefully make the decision.
We’ve been in discussion of upwards six months about it because, frankly, we can’t stand where we live. When we left London, it was for a host of practical reasons, which worked so nicely on paper but here we are some years on, feeling deeply unattached to this space. At first, I guess we figured it was because we were in the postpartum funk, everything felt hard and weird and boring and nothing, but somewhere in amongst all of that, we both admitted to each other that our current town isn’t cutting it. We have community around us, an exceptionally lovely next door neighbour, friends who also have kids, but I don’t think it’s possible to magic love up out of thin air; especially when you’ve given it your best shot over two and something years. You see, we want to love where we live and we want our kid to love the life she has where we live.
So, the good stuff: we have been back and forth, and it feels like we will be moving from one end of the country to the other; an undeniably huge shift. This is why our decision making has taken its time, we are keen not to rush, not to feel as though we are running away. Because of our current experience, we want it to feel right - we are packing a lot into this choice, which is exhausting. We shouldn’t see anything as final, or forever, not when life is so short. I guess this is the crux of it: we want it to feel sweet, to work, the be all end all and everything in between. A fresh start, a clean break. We are searching for magic. Home is us three, but home is also a feeling, a place, a choice. It’s that strange thing of being tangible but also intangible. Sometimes I don’t really know what it is we are looking for, but somehow we will know it when we have it. Sometimes I worry we’re searching for something which is right under our noses.
We are fortunate that both of our jobs will let us do this - if we want to. Fortunate that we have a choice at all. We so want it to be right and this is where we are, teetering on the edge of making a monumental decision, standing in the not knowing.
When I was 19, I went to live in San Francisco for a year. It was a huge leap, the biggest one of my life at that point. I remember not feeling worried, my anxiety blissfully at bay after a few tumultuous years (a story for another time), though I was leaving behind new best friends and a girlfriend (tl;dr we broke up). I loved it instantly, threw myself into life there as if I knew I would never experience exactly this again. I suppose I’m using this nostalgia to convince myself that this big risk will be worth it. We might find the joy. We might find what we’re looking for.
PS: words are on a page, not many, but there is something new.
