I heard that
question a lot before I moved. I heard it from friends and family. If some of
them had listened, they would have heard me talk over the years about how I
would love to live near the beach and how I
was sick and tired of shoveling snow.
When the snow
fell during New England winters, especially when we would be hit by Nor’easters
or some terrifying blizzard, I would be alone. My cats would not help me stock
the house with wood. I kept the wood in the little shed in my front yard (the
one with a red door I had painted a few years before), where I always would
have to shovel a path to as the other main door was not near the driveway and
the areas that would commonly get plowed or shoveled. I had to make sure there
would be a path of access in case of, God forbid, loss of power. When you have
low temperatures for months in a row, your oil bill skyrockets because your
heating system is working hard to maintain your house warm, or at least to keep
the heat in. Air circulation can be poor, as it is too cold to open a window
and if you did, you might as well be throwing hundred-dollar bills out of it. I
definitely do not miss those $600 bills every three weeks. Yes, the air gets
stagnant and dry and your skin and lungs feel it deeply.
Unless you have
lived it, you cannot judge how it feels or try to project on me some sort of
notion that I should stay in the same place. On top of it all, I was going to
be taken out of my Comfort Zone in the sense that I didn’t really know where I
would ultimately end up.
Yes, it was
scary to think that I would leave my network of friends and familiar
surroundings. It was daunting to know that most likely what I could create as a
home elsewhere would not be the same as my home of the last ten years. It was a
huge risk, financially, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, to move over a
thousand miles away, put my stuff in storage, drive down with a car full of
stuff, my two cat babies and find a place to live with my partner of 2.5 years
at the time when we had not lived together before then.
I found
myself in a one-bedroom apartment on an island right on the beach thinking to
myself: “if this doesn’t work with him, I will probably know pretty quickly.”
They were close quarters and we were tired of being on hyperdrive mode moving
from hotel room to hotel room in different cities every few days. It was
stressful but it didn’t feel daunting. I knew this was the person for me, but
there was always a sliver of a chance that we wouldn’t live well together. At
this stage in our lives, people are settled in their own ways. The routines and
the habits are established. But I had faith and I had hope.
After one
week, I relished in the fact that even though we hated our full size bed in our
rental (he’s almost 6’4 ft or 1.95 m) and I am not little either, I was living
my dream of being near the beach and we were getting along better than I could
have ever imagined. Even though I knew in my soul that we made a good team, the
“what if” nagging possibility of a total bust was there. I knew then I had made
the right choice, despite the sacrifice of leaving my loved ones and risking everything.
Embarking into the Discomfort Zone, as my friend Pilar so eloquently puts it,
and into the waters of the Learning Zone and landing on the Growth Zone where
you live your dream.
There were
still lots of challenges ahead: missing my loved ones was in store, we had to
area hunt, house hunt and find a more permanent home, which we did six months
later. I was looking forward to exploring.
We have now
been in our home for 2.5 months, and we are steadily settling in. I still miss
my friends, more than they could ever know. Now I have the opportunity to start
over in a new place and I am looking forward to more discoveries. Not only of
new places, people and experiences, but of myself.
