New Moon Changes

Things are moving, it's happening quickly. In fact, I'm moving. I agreed today to move out of this apartment by May 15. I'll probably go back to The House, there to stay until it's sold, I suppose. It makes economic sense, and I'm not going to find a good rental in the Berkshires at this time of year anyway. It's not ideal; it's farther away from most of M.M.'s and my activities and social center, it's more isolated, and it's got weird associations. I'm going to have to try and set it up differently than it was when we lived there before, so I don't have creepy deja vu all the time.

My biggest fear – and also hope – is that we'll move back there and the house will sell immediately and we'll have to uproot again within a couple of months. I suppose it's really more of a hope than a fear, because it would be worse for the house not to sell and to be stuck in Pittsfield, with a big mortgage payment, for a long time.

The part of my plan that comes after the house sells is even more scary. It's to move to North Carolina. Every time I talk about it with my friends up here it starts to feel impossible and improbable. They openly say, or subtly indicate, that they'll miss me, and I know that I'll miss them, and I start to feel what a huge and irrevocable life change it is. When I'm thinking about it alone, in the shower, or driving down the road, or when I talk to my therapist or my brother or a few friends who are less invested in my staying here, it seems like a great idea: exciting, sensible, the obvious choice. Once in a while though, it hits me how deeply I'm rooted here, and that I won't be able to take those roots with me. I'll be able to visit them, of course, but it won't be the same.

I do need to start life over though. I could do it here, I suppose, but the old patterns - people, places, and things - are seductive and hard to escape. It's time to take the scary risks of doing my own things: going to school, or finding my own work, finding my own friends and community. I've been along time in the safe shadow of someone else's life's work, and I'm starting to feel like I don't have my own identity. I know the irony is probably that I have more of my own identity than ever now, and that's why I recognize how shaky it is. I hate the cliché of it, but there you are. It's a cliché because it's true.

That's why I need to go; I want to go for M.M.'s sake because I believe it will be a better place for her to grow up. The overriding reason is that I want her to grow up with family. It's questionable whether I'll ever be able to give her a sibling, or a father figure, so I want her to grow up with her cousin, with her uncle and aunt. As much as my friends love her, I've learned that blood really is thicker than water or anything else, and I want her to be grounded and rooted with people who can't drift away. And I worry about having her too close to td's family. I can't avoid the fact that she's got their genetic heritage, but I want to rescue her from them in every possible way.

Also, if I'm going to start over I might as well do it someplace with warmer weather and politer people.