Leaving

We know, now, that will be gone for sure. Moving is, as usual, a bittersweet thing. I moved a great deal as a child, teen, and young adult. Sometimes these moves were tiny from one apartment to another in the same town. Other times, they were bigger from town to town. I suspect at first those moves were difficult but I don't remember ever feeling overtly sad at leaving. I wasn't even remotely close to being popular though and I don't remember ever more than maybe one good friend so perhaps that made it easier to pick up and leave. The moves were not always good fits and I went to some horrific schools.  I could endure because I always knew we would soon move again. And we always did.

As a young adult, I think I became addicted to this kind of movement. Even when I stayed in one town, I became restless after a school year and often moved to a new apartment.

Then I meet H and started our family. We have moved more than our friends. Since being in Charlotte, a ten year period, we've moved six times. This doesn't like much to me. And we never left Charlotte. We've stayed in many places for two years. Both H and I have felt the itch though to leave Charlotte and go some where new. We are ready for a change, and now we are going to get it.

But this is a bittersweet move for me, bittersweet in the same way leaving Maine was so many years ago.  Unlike when I was a child, I have built up communities here in Charlotte. There are my homeschooling friends, my work/school friends , my show friends. Just friends, I guess. People who have become a part of my life, shaped me in new ways, grown with me as I have changed.  We will be close in distance to them but it will be strange and hard to know what they will not be a part of my every day life. There won't be dinner dates or parties. There will not be spontaneous park days when it's beautiful in January.

And of course I know there will be those things with new people. But I do mourn a bit, and I am little scared of starting over. The excitement is more tempered than it's ever been before. Perhaps because I am older and have so many children, making friends is harder for me. I woke up the other night worried that we will be lonely and isolated. It's silly. I already have a friend who lives close to Athens and is part of a homeschooling group. But I still feel worried. And each lovely moment with friends here makes it harder to face those worries.