Life Lessons: moving edition.

Moving is one of those things that forces you to learn something about yourself. In kind of a gentle water-boarding sort of way.

Maybe it's because you're in the physical act of unraveling and sorting through the contents of your life and you can't help but uncover something in the process. Or maybe it's because the stress of the thing is enough to power down your once spongy brain matter until it becomes what feels like a dense cube of stupidity and sob-triggers, and it is there that you learn what really makes you tick. Either way, there comes a time in all moves when some sort of monumental learning occurs.

I, for example, have discovered what it is that makes a house a home.

This is not something I sorted out over the course of the past few weeks. I did not learn it while apartment hunting or while starting to pack. Instead, it's something that hit me in the face at 11pm last night, after hurriedly removing everything from the walls when I found out our unit inspection was getting moved from Monday to Friday. Once I had pulled myself together enough (damn you, brain cube) to complete the task, I set down my power drill and putty and stared at the room in shock. Our home was gone.

It's not love, family, books, a cat, a KitchenAid stand mixer or a fluffy duvet. It's drapes.

Our sweet bungalow was as cold and barren as a dorm room. All the heartbreak and attachment and longing and pain I had felt at leaving those 800 square feet went out the window with the fumes from the spackle.

It's the same space, I know. It just doesn't feel like it's ours anymore.

Drapes. Who knew?

And like that, I'm ready to move.

It was like this!

But now it's like this.