No rest for the wicked. This spring is seeing us kicked out of our house because our landlords want to sell it. Unfair? Not if you ask the capitalist system. It’s their legal right in any case, and so now we’re flailing to find an apartment at three months notice while packing everything up.
It’s going to work out eventually, but not soon enough. We will have to spend some time apart. And although I know that life is better and more stable in every concievable way than it was ten years ago, my system is panicking. I realise I never fully healed from that half year of homelessness. Even though I was socially rich enough never to have to sleep on the street, it did put strain on my relationships that some of them never really recovered from. And the stress of every day having to solving the issue of where to sleep tonight was eating away at my sanity. Who has it been long enough since I visited that they won’t tire of me?
That fear is surfacing again. The fear of being in the way, of asking too much, of being permanently bereaft of the chance to offer hospitality. Of keeping my partner in a destructive situation until they can’t take it any more and choose to opt out. Even though we fucking got married this summer, these fears rear their head. But challenge accepted. I’ll trust that we have a future together even if we can’t share our day-to-day life for a while. Our love is stronger than for an eviction to tear us apart.
It’s a gift, in a way, having to move. I’m taking the chance to sort through my things before stuffing them into boxes. Some have served their purpose and I let go of them without a second thought. Others are so well-loved they’re literally falling to pieces, such as my Kånken backpack. I’ve used it for everything basically everyday for the past eight years and now it’s falling apart beyond repair.
End of an era. I cry and let go of it, and invite all emotional baggage from the same eight years to follow along. All the anguish and rootlessness, performance anxiety and perfectionism, fear of belonging and not belonging in equal measure. Refusal of yet strife to fit in. Thank you for protecting me when I needed it for survival, and goodbye. I need to make space for connectedness and trust.
I take with me only what I need now. Only what brings me joy. The rest is far too heavy to carry. I have better things to do now than lugging old trauma around.
Love and release,
Tim
