We're gonna move

We're looking at moving. I hate moving.

I hate it so much that I always say: "The next time I move, they'll have to burn me out like a tick." Or sometimes: "They'll have to smoke me out like a nest of angry bees." Either way, there's the threat of fire and suffocation, which indicates my level of loathing for the experience, and it makes me feel clever for having said it.

I hate it so much that it is an integral part of the fear that goes along with "losing" your home. People say they've lost their home (especially frequently these days), and it evokes this profound sadness that encompasses failure, loss, nostalgia and identity, and often includes the unspoken specter of homelessness. It's this last one that really hits home and drives the panic that manifests as a stress that is so deep-seated that it's unsustainable in the long-term. You've got to find a way to kick it, or it will eat you alive.

Part of the problem with that is that if I find a way to nullify the gnawing fear that is useful when it feeds my discipline (the fear of failure keeps me going to work every day, for example), then I feel a little bit like a loser. I feel like I'm sliding toward the hippie, slacker mentality of a loser who doesn't care about his responsibilities, doesn't pay his bills, never shows up on time. But the fact is that while I maintained this seething sense of doom, the constant worrying was destroying me; whether it was a background hum or a deafening roar, the worry was always there, and it corrodes your entire outlook.

So I stumbled onto the solution a while back - and not a moment too soon, as I couldn't take it anymore. I employed a simple visualization: I reviewed my past and realized that we've never starved or slept in the cold. I could easily picture a time when we'd have to move all our shit to another house (this visualization still had us slinking away in shame, like some sort of parade of disgust, while our current neighbors all lined the road and tisk-tisked and shook their heads as our Caravan of Regret trundled by; bad habits don't go away in an eyeblink), but that was it. There was no mortal terror necessary; my wife and child aren't going to be starved and raped in the streets. At worst, we've still got family in the area and even if we were out, flat on our asses, help is available from several quarters. And that's "worst-case."

As I said, this relief came in the nick of time. I was starting to crack under the only pressure I've ever had to worry about: the self-generated kind. But beyond that, I've had to comfort my wife after she caught the very same bug. It's a good thing, because I don't know if I have the strength to bullshit my way through looking on the bright side when I can't actually see it for myself. I don't think I could be convincing if I really thought that everything was fucked and there was no hope in sight. Luckily, I could manage to be the positive one for five minutes, and offer some reassurance. It's surprising how powerful it is to have another hopeful voice to lean on when you're feeling despair. Even if it's only for five minutes - there's a spiral that is easy enough to stop, but not without some whisper of outside intervention.

As it is, it's only as bad as "lookin' for a new place to rent." The credit application, the hope that pets won't be a hassle, the mental and physical exhaustion that goes along with the logistics of coordinating the transport of ALL THE FUCKING JUNK that you've acquired through time, fear of loss and the reliance upon retail therapy to keep your mood positive.

But that's it: Tedium. Simple, slight embarrassment. Mental and physical effort. Money. That's all it costs, before you're back on track again somehow. Sure, you might have to downgrade to something less spacious or convenient or pleasant for a time, but you're not going to have to slaughter your pets for meat, or say goodbye to a love one for the last time. It's not the end of the world.

The loss of the illusion of control and permanence is a bummer, I'll admit that. But really, none of this is real, anyway. You live where you live until you don't; nobody promised that this would be the last place I ever sat my fat ass down anyway, except for the lying little bastard in my head, and the sooner I stop listening to him the better off I'll be anyway. The illusion of security is luxurious at some point. Just because some people are able to maintain that illusion until the time of their death doesn't make it a more real phenomenon, anyway. They just got lucky.

We've been lucky for a while, but luck changes. For the good, and for the bad. Today, it seems like hope is simply the belief that the coin will land right-side-up just once more than -down. If that's enough to get me through, I'll take it.