Moving cross country: A lesson in staying present
At the end of April 2024 I packed up all the cute fun things I could fit into my Toyota Prius and drove with my cat Mei Mei from Chicago to Vermont. This permanent move was a really big decision for me, considering I had lived in Chicago for almost seven years.
Today is the summer solstice marking the first day of summer in the Northern hemisphere. Summer thunderstorms have cleansed the evening and the streets with intermittent torrential downpours. I have spent today reflecting on the past few months and the transition I have emerged through, moving back into my childhood home.
At the end of April 2024 I packed up all the cute fun things I could fit into my Toyota Prius and drove with my cat Mei Mei from Chicago to Vermont. This permanent move was a really big decision for me, considering I had lived in Chicago for almost seven years. During that time. I was able to cultivate an incredible, tender group of friends that I consider to be my chosen family. Why might I leave the city you might ask. As a young person, living in the city seems like a no-brainer, but it didn’t feel that simple to me. I did very much appreciate the diversity and opportunities that Chicago provided, but also found myself intensely burned out socially and spiritually and ready to live my life somewhere smaller, slower and amongst the mountains I grew up in… even if that meant uprooting myself from a life that I worked really hard to build.
I can’t explain what exactly brought about this realization, only that it was something that I knew deeply in the core of my being. That deep pit of longing in your stomach.. the body’s second brain.
This whole experience has been a lesson in staying present. There is a song that I love by the Weepies: Can’t go back now. One of the lyrics:
“I can’t say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else. In the end the only steps that matter are the one’s you take all by yourself.”
These lyrics were playing continually in my head and reminding me that we are all just living on a floating rock. Trying to find the balance between living interdependently with others without being co-dependent on each other. Maintaining my independence and my ability to dream and strive on my own. I felt like while living in Chicago, it was difficult for me to be a fully actualized version of myself.
For the last two months I was in the city, getting rid of things, packing and preparing for the drive, I was also reaching out to friends and saying yes to expereinces. Something strange happened. Those last two months turned out to be some of the best I had and I think it was because I really lived like I only had two more months in the city. As a result of that mindset shift I expereinced so many moments of sweetness and connections with new people. So much so that I was tempted to change my mind all together. But standing strong in my truth and the original reasons why I wanted to leave helped to ease that temptation. As soon as I released the expectations that I was having about what living in Chicago would bring me, I started to feel more fulfilled in my relationships and more stable in the job that I had as well.
It was really difficult to leave all of that behind and essentially start all the way over. Standing on my wobbly toddler legs and perching on the precipice of my growing edges. The lesson that I take from all this, is that releasing expectations and attachments to the outcomes of your actions allows for more space to see what is already there and that change is inevitable but it’s better to embrace the change, do the daring thing, and do it scared, and then rebuild afterwards.
