Remember how last year I was talking about being sad and starting therapy? Besides working on my anxiety, confidence and struggle with self-worth, there was something else. Something I rarely talked about before admitting it at one of the sessions. How I felt stuck. How my home wasn’t a home. That place made me so deeply miserable and frustrated, I didn’t even acknowledge it anymore. It felt like that was my hole that I would never climb out of. After numerous lockdowns, it almost seemed like that was happening.
Home for me represents a safe and sacred place. It used to be a place I carefully guarded against an invasion of the wrong people, or at least so I thought. It had to be completely and only mine. Every disruption of my carefully constructed (false) feeling of peace brought disaster that no amount of palo santo could burn out. 10 years’ worth of memories became too heavy for me. I can always take the good ones with me, but the bad were heavily engraved on the walls.
I felt stuck because I was privileged enough to have it, that it felt ungrateful complaining about it, yet I didn’t have enough resources to make the move on my own. So I convinced myself that I was exaggerating and suppressed it.
The biggest lesson life has been teaching me over the past years is that it’s okay to ask for help. To ask even before having a solution in mind. To just speak out. That being independent doesn’t mean every step of the way needs to be done alone.
And I did. The moment I started to shout it out loud, the universe listened. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but it’s a story with a happy ending. They say it’s small moments that can change our life and we seldom believe that. But if we look back, there’s always a split-second decision that defined our path. The chain reaction that happened after the decision to start looking for my own space, was incredible.
It almost feels like I’ve started this story in another lifetime. I’ve been dying to share it with you, I’ve imagined the moment I would post this at every step I took, I’ve written thousands of paragraphs and made a hundred snapshots in my head, yet most of it now feels like it’s been lived by another person.
It took a full year, but I’m here. We are here. In our brand new home. The chain reaction I couldn’t predict even in my wildest dreams. Oh, universe.
