It’s really hard to feel like yourself when you’re going through so many changes. What you felt, thought, believed in before your whole life got turned upside down seems like miles away and you keep racing to catch it, but it gets exhausting.
I lived with Amy for a year before I moved out here. I paid rent and a variety of bills and I loved it. I complained about them every now and then – “Why is our cable bill so high this month?! WHY?!” – but all the time, I would think, Being able to drive to the grocery store at 3:00 in the morning for no other reason besides being in the mood for orange soda is so awesome.
It depends on what you grew up in. If you grew up with a lot of freedom, no curfew, no restrictions (relationally or economically), then moving out and taking on a butt-load of responsibility is going to be more that just a wake-up call. But if you had to be home every night by 1:00 am and were repremanded for falling asleep at a questionable hour, once you get to be 18, 19, 20 years old, you start to ache for the freedoms that come with financial independence. The latter was my situation.
Somewhere in the middle of this, I realized I’m just repeating the words of everyone else who’s written about this aspect of life, but I still feel like sharing. I claim no originality in this post. I’m just saying, “This has been what it’s like for me. Take from it what you will.”
Let me impress upon you – the difference between moving out then and moving out here now is grand in scale. I moved in with Amy and we shared everything. Rent, television, phone, utilities, groceries – we each paid our share. Also, where we lived was a mere 15 minutes from my parents’ house. So if I ever needed to go home, wanted to go home, whatever, then I could. Out here, it’s been different. All the bills have fallen on me and me alone. I live by myself, so every responsibility I have is for me to take care of only. I’m also 2700 miles away from my family. There’s no “going home to visit whenever I feel like it” under these circumstances – this is something I took for granted and could have never come to appreciate until I moved far enough away to realize how nice it truly was.
So, everything that’s happened since I moved to Tennessee has been, in a few very descriptive words, shocking, life-altering, humbling, and jarring to the very core of my being. However, I’ve reached a point where I’m telling myself, “Enough already. You don’t like this, so make some changes.”
The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over, expecting different results. We all know this.
Now, I don’t really know where this post is leading. But to cut to the point, I’m just going to say that I’m going to be making some changes to my current situation. I’m not sure what they all are yet, but that doesn’t matter completely. What matters is having the desire to make things more functional, more manageable, and create a greater sense of security than I’ve been feeling for the last several months.
First change? The place I live. This apartment is bland and muted and I won’t take it any longer than I have to. So when my lease is up, I’ll be moving out. Somewhere with color. And character. A place whose walls remind me that I have a pulse and that I am not, by any means, just another person stuck in a cubicle.
I’m different, and I aim to live that way.
