I’m sitting in my new apartment while I type this. Soon, I’ll have to go get ready to leave. Today I have to drive back to the house and work on clearing what I want out of the place before I can have an estate sale. I don’t want to leave my new place, and this surprises me. I’ve lived here a week and already it feels like home. It’s amazing how adaptable we humans are. 

That’s not to say that I don’t still feel a bit lost here. I think there’s actually a bit of shock, too. I feel an “out of body” sensation quite often. As though I’m seeing myself from outside of myself and I just shake my head in surprise. Wasn’t I married, living in the country and teaching only 9 months ago?

But I’m here now. This is my home for the at least the next 6 months. I’m meeting people and the cats are settling in nicely. And to be honest, wherever they are feels like home, anyway.  I’m sleeping through the night, something that has always been a gauge of my emotional state. It’s easier to go to the grocery store because there’s less danger of running into dangerous memory traps. 

I don’t think longingly of that house itself all the time, like I worried I might. 

I’m mourning the loss of an entire life and a person I’ll never be again in addition to the love of my life, and that’s the hard work, but actually transitioning to living here wasn’t as bad as I thought SO FAR. As we all know, in the grieving process, we can always expect the triggers to be coming for us.

I think the move itself and selling the house was a good thing. I think I needed to be in a space that was all mine. I needed to see what was possible outside of my safety zone. I think most of all, I needed to prove to myself that I could do this on my own. 

Best of all, I like Portland. It’s fitting that I moved to a place with the only city wilderness in the United States. There are 29 different hikes for me to try in Forest Park. If you live in Portland, come join me. I’m going to check each one off until I’ve hiked ’em all.

And the other day, I spotted two hummingbirds soaring up and over my apartment building. It felt like a blessing.