A new chapter

Today as I physically relocated myself to a new place I had lots of thoughts on my mind. I had outbursts of emotions too, though they are too personal and too hard to capture in words for me to fully describe them here. Let’s just say what I have planned in the next few months is more or less a spontaneous decision, though what followed this spontaneity were waves of sadness, guilt, fear, but also excitement and reassurance. It’s always hard to hit pause on something I’ve grown far too familiar with, then introduce some abrupt change to replace the comfort. It feels strange and out of place. I feel out of place. But in a way I am ‘home’, because I finally choose to stop moving from one address to another every few days or weeks, because I finally opt to live like a proper adult, to take roots somewhere instead of merely drifting around. It’s kind of crazy that instability has been my default mode of living, and I have grown so accustomed to it that I now feel anxious about being in one place for long.

But then I realize maybe ‘home’ isn’t always a place. To me, ‘home’ has been a person, and leaving behind that person induces emotions that resemble what I would feel when I was lost or stranded away from a place of familiarity. I would start crying uncontrollably, triggered by a shared silence that reminded us both what we were about to face. Then I would joke about my reactions, make fun of myself for sobbing like a little kid, but I knew the tears would come again. Forcing change in life gives this kind of effect, and it is ever more dramatic when the decision for change is emotionally charged, and the stake grows higher as time passes.

I guess the first stage of transition is always the hardest, then somehow it gets easier. That’s the nature of change: with time a ‘change’ just becomes a new norm, and we settle into until yet another ‘change’ presents itself and turns everything upside down. Already I need to cope by convincing myself of this inevitable progression from discomfort to comfort, jumping ahead to a point in the future when all my loneliness will have subsided and I will have learned to enjoy being by myself once again. After all, I choose to be away for this next while precisely to escape a whirlwind of uncertainty and ground myself in the common, humble responsibilities of adult life. An even bigger part of this choice is to step back into that reality which has built some of the best parts of myself: a sense of agency, accomplishment, and independence. It’s not that I want to give up adventure because spiritually I relate to someone decades older than me (I get this comment quite often). Just for a short while, I have the desperate need to make my own life decisions and care for myself, and I guess if there are emotional tolls in exchange for this option, I only have the choice to make them part of the challenge of being on my own.

I feel like sharing this in public (yeah sure, without actually describing everything in public) because I get suffocated keeping it all to myself and the person I have to leave behind. I also want to make my decision to move away worthy of all the burdens it brings, and publicizing my efforts to use these months for some sort of self-(re)discovery is one way to justify my choice. I have set up a separate blog in which I keep an ongoing account of my progress in this “new chapter”, though I don’t know if I will ever share it with anyone. Already this entry feels so self-absorbed. I may once in a while draw insights from this journey and put it on my public blog if my insights ever become relevant and helpful to others. In the mean time, I just want to commit to these months of personal growth, while I gradually cope with the first, most painful phase of transition.