Still home

I’m back to posting! And I don’t even know where to start. Out of practice and all.

Yesterday I moved out of my flat for good. A place I’ve lived nearly all my independent adult life, and certainly longer than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. It was a shared home and then it was my own home for nearly equal time periods. Both pretty spectacular in their own rights.

It was hard to leave but it was also easy because it was time.

I’ve gone through just about every emotion over this, and now I have landed on ‘relieved and recovering’. It would be one thing to do just the moving out, you see, but doing it while leaving my job and planning a logistical circus of a trip by myself (VISAS, YOU GUYS, HOLY GEEEEEZ) is kind of fucking ridiculous. It’s precisely the ‘you are doing too much’ thing that I (and others) constantly tell myself to stop. It’s what I yell at the television telling people off on Grand Designs for doing ALL THE TIME – you know, let’s build a house and plan our wedding and also have our first baby at the same time and really WHO NEEDS A PROJECT MANAGER or an architect for that matter LET’S DO IT ALL OURSELVES! Best idea ever.

(I am not having a child during all of this upheaval, but I AM watching a 4-month old puppy, which might as well be the same. He’s damn cute though. That’s my excuse.)

Anyway, now I’m sitting in Kristina and Yann’s flat, my (lovely!) home for the next month, and I have one big thing out of the way. I have a LOT of other things to do (Do you realise how many places you need to change your bloody address?! efffffffff.) but this Being Out is already making a massive difference. It feels DONE.

Last week, I suppose due to ALL OF THE THINGS, there was one day I was hit by crippling anxiety of the degree I’ve not experienced for 4 or 5 years. It was INCREDIBLY rough. But then there were friends talking sense, some very good beer, and dancing. And it lifted.

And then it was my last night in the flat. I finished the last manic bits of packing. I ate The. Most. Amazing. Pizza. downstairs at Origano with Katie. I drank two whiskys out of a coffee mug and danced like a maniac to Billy Joel and Taylor Swift/NIN and MGMT and Hot 8 Brass Band among my boxed belongings til 1am. Then I went to sleep.

When I woke up, I had a cup of tea and my fucking rockstar friends arrived to help me carry my life down the stairs and distribute it to three separate locations across the city in about two hours flat. Then I had a coffee and ham and cheese on coconut bread (Casa Amiga! swoon), listened to some sweet piano playing while gulping more tea, and did 3 hardcore hours of learning a Lindy routine (because running up and down 3 flights of stairs multiple times with heavy boxes is not adequate exercise for one day). Then we ate dinner in the pub and I walked all the way across town home to Kristina and Yann’s, because I was going to take the bus but it was such a nice night that I couldn’t possibly, hour-long walk be damned.

Let me tell you: All of that? Is the way to move.

I’ll miss my flat, but it had it’s day. Today I took a walk around Arthur’s Seat because it was ANOTHER beautiful day (seriously, Edinburgh, KILLING IT), and thought, well, I may not have my kitchen, but I’m still home. And I get to come back to the best city and the best people in the whole world. And it’s all fine. Hooray for that.

And now that I’m back to writing, you’ll soon hear all about that logistical circus. I leave the country in less than a month. There’s plenty to say between now and then.