Moving out and moving on

This week I had an impulse to go home. My sister had arrived back from New Zealand (AFTER A YEAR AND A HALF) and as I hadn’t time to return over Easter I was looking forward to experiencing my provincial Dorset life.

However, despite being surrounded by fields of nothingness and normally being so relaxed I am positively comatose, this trip home has been MANIC. My calm Eden has disappeared.

For I have lived in the same house all my life. 21 long years, and my mother has been there for 26. It is the house my family grew up in and I guess it is the house which we all dispersed from when we left for University and our own lives. Well, this wonderful constant which I assumed would always be there, is being sold.

Sold.

I swear I went through the normal stages of grief – I primarily acted upon exaggeration, but there was hatred of my mother and her heartless ways, denial, sabotage and bitterness.

However, I have come to terms (sort of) with the fact that my childhood home will have a new family living in it in a few weeks.

Of course I am slightly heartbroken to say goodbye to the building which has literally housed a lifetime of memories, but, I understand that things move on.

However, that is not to say that this move hasn’t come at the most inconvenient time! As the youngest, one of the burdens I bear is an expectation to have my life sorted. My parents are selling their house and moving to France, which means this summer I can either live in a hamlet in France, a house which doesn’t even have internet, or, I can move out. Now, I am 21 and I do appreciate that moving out is the norm. What makes this harder however, is the fact that the same day my parents move home, I move to Amsterdam. This day is two days after my last exam.

My stress levels increase just thinking about it, because everyone in my family is inflicted with the same terrible condition – we are all hoarders! I have got a box of pretty tea-cups I couldn’t bear to take to university for fear they would be broken, and now they have to go to storage…

Honestly, the best thing about living in the same house all my life is the fact that I have never had to experience the trauma of moving house before!

All I can say is that I HATE IT.

Whilst our local charity shops get abundantly replenished, I have to go through boxes of pyjamas I had when I was seven and far too many toys from my youth. Why I still have these things is beyond me!

There are boxes everywhere, and I mean everywhere! For some reason they have already packed up every drinking glass we own and the mere insinuation that I have equal stresses to their moving ones results in an extremely irate woman forcing me to pack up more of the lounge. So much for my relaxing visit home…

All I can say is – TIP OF THE ICEBERG.

However, all of this does have a purpose – it got me considering all the change this year would bring. I never thought my home would be sold, equally, I never thought that I would be graduating from university so soon! And so whilst I think it is natural to cling to the remains of a past life – because I was lucky enough to have something so wonderful that I never wanted to give it up – it becomes crucial to look forward. I am sure I will find another house to make more memories in, as I am sure that post-university life won’t be an entire drag. So I am approaching May, crazy mental May, as I do my mother – without resentment and brimming over with optimism for the future.

Florence