Unpacking

When I moved to Forest Falls (back in 1995), I noticed something peculiar about the way I move, something I had never noticed before. But this awareness clarified a habit that I've had my entire life, and that is that I don't "unpack" after a move for at least six months. Oh, the big stuff gets unpacked right away. . . .all of the stuff I need and use on a daily basis, but everything that makes a home a home? That stuff stays boxed up for at least six months before the slow process of creating a home begins.

What I am realizing this morning, is that this habit doesn't just apply to a geographical move. I've had a bag of "stuff" from when I was staying down in Prescott during my leave of absence, and it was only this morning, now 3 months past when I have returned home, before the bag was finally unpacked, sorted and purged.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

It's like I somehow don't "trust" that a move is going to "stick" unless a certain amount of time has passed. . . .a remnant from all of the moving we did during the first 12 years of my life, I'm sure. But it's like all of the anxiety also gets boxed up with the stuff, so much so that it takes months before I can open up these boxes (or bags) and unpack them. I always feel better, though. . . .once they're unpacked and everything has found its new place in my home. . . .just an odd thing, how the anxiety gets all packed up with the stuff.

I think it's more than this, though. There is a part of me that does not want or like to move, and when I look back over the very long history of moves that I have made both as a child (when the moving was in my mom's control) and as an adult, the general reason for most of the moves has been a form of solution to some problem that needed to be solved. . . .so we moved. . . .problems solved. . . .lol.

As a child, I hated moving. . . .it generally meant leaving behind anything of personal meaning. . . .going to new schools. . . . .making new friends. . . .but also having no choice or say in the matter. . . .so all of that sadness and anxiety got boxed up just like everything else that couldn't be left behind. But as an adult, I have taken on this form of problem solving into my own way of being. . . .but I don't think even my adult self enjoys moving, either. . . .which explains why I am dragging my feet to leave the canyon, even though another part of me feels ready to move on. . . .I just don't want to move again. . . .I'm too tired from the long string of moves to solved problems of both choice and circumstance.

Life isn't always linear, as memory spirals through our life like the emotional DNA that defines who we are across both time and geography. . . .and sometimes we have to dive down below the surface of the memory before we discover who and what we really are.