Coming up for air.
I’ve moved, and it’s been anything but straightforward and explainable. So here are a whole bunch of photos.
I’m sitting here writing this on my couch with Sundae at my feet giving her paws a good cleaning. To my left is the best window in the new house — it looks out onto the side yard (I have a side yard) which includes a couple of tall trees and some messy bushes which shield me from the neighbor’s house a bit (no one lives there) and is home to some cute chipmunks and noisy grackles and a beautiful rose of Sharon bush. I’ve been sitting here some mornings, popping the window open and hearing the neighborhood red-tailed hawk calling out and the mourning doves cooing while I drink my coffee and contemplate basic things like security and safety and purpose and the meaning of my life.
I’ve moved, and it’s been anything but straightforward and explainable.
It hasn’t quite set in yet that I’ve traded loud sirens and angry drunk neighbors and windows that look into other windows for only the sounds of peepers at night and windows that look out onto leafy green trees. To be honest, it feels really unsettling, even though this is the kind of environment I grew up in and there was once a time when sirens and neighbors and no privacy would have felt unsettling. At my apartment, there was a brightly lit hallway between my front door and the outside, and now there’s just . . . the outside. It’s dark out here at night. (Quite literally, in my first week here I went to take the trash out late at night and was stunned to find . . . darkness.)
Going from city-ish living to suburban-ish living, while living alone, has been a really challenging adjustment.
I don’t have many words these days, which might be evident by my lack of sharing on social media and lack of words shared here. So instead of any lengthy essay on the state of my mental health and what loneliness feels like and the human condition and what “home” even means, I thought I would share some photos from life lately, old-fashioned blog-style.