Normal Human Female

Moving is my personal circle of hell. I hate packing, I hate being confronted by my own consumerism as a punishment, I hate the million things to do that swirl in my head and leak out into oblivion like a bad faucet, only to come back at 2am when I suddenly remember that very important thing. Nils recently told me he thinks I’m the “more organized one” – I had a good laugh, because for seven years I’ve thought he was the more organized and prepared of this team. The truth is we’re both disorganized but have managed to cobble together imperfect systems that are carrying us through this. We may be landing in Sweden like General Grievous’s ship lands on Coruscant, but damn it, we’re going to land.

Why do we do things we hate, or strongly dislike? I don’t like being woken up in the night by a fussy baby either, and I chose that for myself too. Believe it or not, I hate interviewing for jobs, it dredges up all my anxiety and panic, and yet I’ve done it again and again. Looking at my resume, you would be forgiven for assuming job interviews are a favorite hobby of mine. So why? The simple answer is that the benefits of doing these things outweigh the cost, and we make that logical calculation. This is not exactly wrong, but it flattens a human dimension of it.

Life is growth and growth is life. This is obvious to us as children, when our pants get too short and our shoes too small. We learn more and more about the world – how to read, write, add fractions, socialize – and this is hard work. We grow and grow and grow until we become self-sustaining adults, and there is no need to grow. When we’ve reached the mountaintop of paying our bills and have time and money to spend, we have the choice to avoid further discomfort and no longer ask ourselves what we want to be when we grow up – instead striving for permanent stasis. Why do we think we are done growing up when most of our life is still unlived, pages unwritten? (thanks, Natasha). I’m not dead yet, and I’m not ready to rest on my laurels. I still have hard things to do and doors to open – to opportunities, life experiences, meaning, joy, lessons learned.

Even after the dust settles on our moving hell, we’ll continue to face hard things that are unavoidable with moving to a new country. This is a marathon where the only way out is through. There’s an older version of myself that I’ll meet someday. She’ll be stronger, wiser, more patient and resilient. She’ll have amazing stories to tell and some worn-in smile lines on her face. The only way I’ll ever know her is to write the pages, even when it’s a struggle.