Moving Sickness

 Moving Sickness: When you are disoriented and overwhelmed by moving.


There are boxes everywhere!
You'd think after moving 16 times in 16 years that I would be good at moving.  I'm not.
I love the new experiences, but the process itself is painful and highlights everything I'm bad at.

To start with, I don't like people touching my stuff.  By the time we are packed up though, the movers have laid hands on every item I own and are intimately familiar will all of it.  This also makes me feel exposed, which I really don't like.

When the movers come, it takes about two full days for them to pack up all of our stuff.  Its a crazy two days.  And very stressful.  I run around like a mad woman giving instructions, answering questions, and cringing every time I see them touching something I love (Please don't break it!)

There are boxes everywhere.

On day three they start putting it all on the truck. This part is actually pretty quick, and as they pull away, there is a sense of relief.  Its done.  I don't have to think about it until we get to our new house.

When we get to the new house, it only takes a few hours for the movers to unload all the boxes.  Then the real stress starts.

There are boxes everywhere!

But where is anything?  The pillows and blankets?  Where are the shower curtains and towels?  Where are the shower curtain rings?!?  There are labels on the boxes, but I cannot read most of them and experience tells me that it wouldn't matter if I could.  The contents are an odd mix of any thing, from any room, that would fit, and a random label that describes something that was somewhere in our house.  Its anyone's guess where anything is.

Enter the mindless unpacking of box after box after box.  Some of it is stuff I didn't even remember I had, but more of it is stuff that I should have gotten rid of a long time ago.  All of it is stuff that I don't know where to put.  Now there are boxes AND stuff everywhere.  And this is the part that I'm really bad at.

There will be boxes everywhere and stuff everywhere for months.

I will feel disoriented and overwhelmed for months.  I am not good at setting up house. I don't know where to put stuff.  It will feel discouraging to watch neighbors move in after me and get set up before me.  And even more discouraging to know that when I finally do get all the boxes unpacked and all the stuff put away, it will still look like I just moved in because I don't know how to decorate.  I don't really know how to arrange stuff to make it look like a comfortable home.  And by the time I think I might, its time to move again.

And once again, there will be boxes everywhere.