We’re Moving…

  I find myself sitting here on the couch at 6 am after letting Arya out, wanting to pick up my computer and start writing.  I haven’t been able to sleep recently, insomnia rules my world at this point in my life’s juncture.  I’ve always had trouble sleeping; it depended on the phase of life where I could get the most hours in before my brain or a baby turns it back on.  Even in sleep, my dreams keep me awake.  My health journey as of late has been wild to say the least.  It’s funny how I could talk about it to different people and never get a similar response from any of them.  All are confused about what is going on inside of me.  I guess I barely know so why should they?  I always share about myself because it makes me feel better, but right now the point is moot.  I haven’t been writing either, only in my journal.  My work on Aurora By Jacqueline has been stagnant.  Have I just been living in the moment as a Mama? Or is it also an aversion to anything where I can use my creativity to cope?  The jury is out for this one.

         It came as a surprise from Brian when one day he said, ‘we have to buy a house’.  “The longer we live here we are putting money into someone else’s pocket and we need to keep our family protected and invested in something that is ours.” Well ok… cue the anxiety meter on full blast.  Instead of jumping for joy that we are finally in this stage of life, I felt a storm inside.  I do not do well with the unknown.  Until we found this new home, we argued about the size, the location and the storage space.  Then, once we were in contract, the uncertainty of it all has me picking fights while I’m clawing to survive,  All of this going on in the midst of Arya’s health scare, me beginning a new medicine to help with my PMDD and Brian trying to close up the school year.  Every conversation ending up with the figurative slamming down the phone to crying alone in the bathroom.  For better or for worse, it takes a toll on a marriage.  If your foundation is not solid, it can come crumbling down.  

    Working on my health amidst this crazy home buying stage of life has been really difficult for me.  Instead of seeing my home as a safe place, I see it being taken apart piece by piece as we wait in anticipation for the new house to be ours.  I’ve always preached that our homes are wherever we lay our heads and home is not a place but a feeling furnished by the heart.  But when you’re waiting to be a steward of a new home, it feels different being in your current one. Instead of me being creative everyday, I am walking around anxiously thinking about what my next steps are in dismantling our life around me.  What once had a deep plum hue on the closets next to me are now a stark white that I primed and painted back for our landlord.  The cozy green kitchen that I decided to paint before the holidays last year is back to its original lack of color.  I fear that once each shade of my world is drained, I am draining along with it.  

     You would think that getting ready to own my own home would make me ecstatic, but there’s so much toil on the inside that it’s been hard to show excitement.  I try my best to hype up Vienna; explaining that wherever we live together is our home, this was a place we lived in that belonged to someone else and now we will have our very own.  It’s a hard concept for a three year old to grasp but the more I drive by the house, the more she requests to go see it by her own free will.  Knowing that she will be moving from the only place she’s ever known as well as entering a new school in September…full time…has her insides discombobulated.  I can see this in different areas of  regression.  I know children are resilient, more so than adults.  Thinking about moving here with her at only three months old, using my creativity to get through the long days alone, I feel nostalgic.  I’m in reverse now.  I can’t use my magic wand to take the world around us from black and white to technicolor, I’m changing it back.  I’m trying to take all of these changes around me in stride, but deep down the feeling of discontentment is strong.

     As I struggle to keep my surroundings in somewhat of a cohesive mess, I find myself developing an eye twitch.  A small reminder when Brian is speaking that no matter how hard I try, the unknowingness of it all is tearing at my ability to cope in my normal ways.  The buildings I once painted on the walls of the living room  for Vienna are now hidden behind the touch up color called patience.  I guess that should be a theme of this piece. We have not received the appraisal yet, someone seemed to have dropped the ball at the bank or the agency they used.  Either way, we’ve been getting the runaround.  We have everything we need besides that.  All that is left is for the contract to go into underwriting and then we get the closing date.  All of these terms have haunted me for the past couple of months and have been written in excess in the notebook I bought to keep track of everything. 

Becoming a homeowner felt like it was never attainable for me.  I could say it was because I came from a broken home. Having a single mother work her hardest to give us the best life we could have, while living with my grandparents made me feel safe and secure everyday. But…our home was never ours.  Seeing my father live in his created a disdain in me that allowed these self deprecating thoughts.  The more we frequent using negative self-talk, the more it lowers our self-esteem and creates anxiety and depression…especially in young children.  Brian and I joke about having a wall mounted TV and a dishwasher…I always thought that having them made me feel like an adult.  The TV has been mounted for years now…The dishwasher is on the list for the new home.  Why do material things take such a hold of us?  Knowing that my baby is growing beautifully because of me should make me feel like the richest woman in the world.

     While I sit here on the couch as the sun rises behind me, my dog at my side and my husband and child sleeping in their beds (a novelty for Vienna to be in hers), I can only continue moving forward in this journey I call mine.  The confidence in who I am is slowly growing.  Through each stage of life, there has been difficulty, why should this hurdle be any different?  Doesn’t wisdom come with age?  In my 39 years, I know that I have fought my hardest to survive, to break through any wall, climb any ladder, and crawl through what feels like an endless tunnel.  I should remind myself that overcoming this new obstacle is no different.  Very soon I will have a place to call my own, where I can step outside and make my very own OZ.  A place where the color cannot be washed away.

Love, Jacqueline xoxo