Moving day...

For the last 15 years of my life (almost half of my entire life!!!), every time I used the word "moving," it meant going to a different city, at least a few hundred kilometers away, most of the time, a different country or even continent. I've moved too many times, I've lost count.

However, as far as I can remember, this is the only time I moved inside the same city. It's definitely the first time that "moving" didn't mean also changing my entire life, the language I'm speaking day to day, the people I hang out with, the places I go, the activities I participate in. It's weird. I'm moving, but it doesn't really feel like it. I'm moving to a new apartment, 3.6km away. That's nothing. I can walk from one place to the other. It's 2 stops on the metro.

I think that's why I've taken it so easily. I'm usually really stressed out and worried and almost in a panic, for weeks before the move. It's not the move itself, it's the fact that it symbolizes a 180 degrees change of everything in my life. This time, the only thing that's changing is that I won't have roommates anymore.

That was the point, obviously, I wanted to get my own place. But at the same time, I was feeling all melancholy at the end of dinner tonight, looking around at all these people I love and have shared so much with, for 18 months. I'm going to miss them. A lot. I know they're only 15 minutes away, but we were a family, there's an inner circle, the Beermannkinder. I'm leaving the inner circle... and that's kinda sad... :(  This is the last post I will write here. It's 4:39am, I should probably be sleeping, but somehow I want to savor the last moments in this house... there are many dear memories here...

On a positive note, I feel like this is marking a changing point in my life. I'm "growing up," it's almost like moving out of the "dorms" after college. :) Silly comparison maybe, but that's what it feels like. I'm happy, and I think this will be very good for me.

Onward and Upward!

p.s.: also, totally looking forward to walking around naked in my own house! YEY!!!

Emotions...

For a long time, I was an expert at suppressing my emotions, not allowing myself to feel them, or outwardly pretending I felt nothing at all. It was to protect myself from painful feelings. Put up the walls, pretend nothing's happening, and maybe, just maybe, you won't feel it.

Eventually, there came a time when I started to realize how wrong this was. How emotions are part of what makes us human, and how feeling them, be them good or bad, is part of the richness of the human experience. It was hard to change. Actually, it's still hard. I'm still tempted to suppress everything bad, and "not feel it." But lately, I've sort of embraced it. Allowed myself to feel sad and even cry if I needed to. And you know what? It was liberating.

Today was one of those days.

I logged on to an old email account, one that I haven't used in years, because it's been invaded by spammers. What isn't my surprise, when I see one lost little email in the middle of 500 spam messages, from someone I haven't seen in years, and which actually contained a couple of pictures. Tears immediately sprang to my eyes. My automatic response immediately tried to suppress them. I stopped it, and allowed the tears to flow. I answered the email, tears still in my eyes, and said some things that I should have said 20 years ago. Yes, I've been suppressing those tears for 20 years. That's a long time...

Nobody wants to hurt. Nobody likes to cry. But what we don't realize is that those tears, that pain, is not going to go away unless you feel it. Unless you look it in the face and accept it, feel it, and then, put it away.

Sometimes a good cry is just what the doctor ordered...