Moving.

I'm taking this move harder than I expected. Despite what some people might think of me and my wish to remain in the small town I was born in, I've done a bit of moving around in my lifetime. My dad was the superintendent of a few different bridge projects, so I lived elsewhere than Morehead from age seven to age thirteen. Maybe that lack of permanence in my childhood is why I dislike change--maybe it's even part of why I dug my roots in so deeply when we finally went home. During my first semester of college, I stumbled onto muds, and that changed the course of my life. I eventually settled into a major (and out of it, but still in it--that's another story) because I became fascinated by how it worked and then I ended up married. (It's almost ironic, but I still have yet to write a single line of code for the mudworld--it led me in the right direction but I ended up elsewhere because of it.) Then, one day I blinked and realized that this choice I had made meant that there was very little chance of settling in Morehead after all. The fact that we're here is proof that I was right. The point I'm trying to get to right now, though, is just that moving around so much did prepare me for the process of moving, and that's why I'm so surprised at how often I still feel like I haven't yet adjusted to my life.

It's the small things that I'm talking about--like I haven't yet mastered the light switches in this place. They're usually in multiples, and some of them are on when they're up and some are off when they're up. I have to think about it when I try to do something as basic as turning on the lights. I turn them off when I mean to turn them on, and I turn the fan on in the bathroom more often than I would care to admit. I still haven't found the purse I was planning to switch to for the summer--I know where most of my purses are, but one of them is missing and I'm not even sure where to begin looking for it. I keep reaching for my spatula in the fork drawer--which I moved from the original configuration after a week because I kept reaching for my fork in the spatula drawer. The floor tilts along the bedroom wall, so we have the bed propped on bits of wood to level it out--but it's not perfect and I slide towards the bottom of the bed. I have to watch where I undress because we have windows with actual people outside them now. I've neglected to watch television shows that I used to look forward to all week. I crave the sound of television chefs in the background and I turn the channel to 55 on reflex almost every time--after I figure out again how to operate this remote.

Don't misunderstand--I'm not discontent. I'm settling in. I'm adjusting, and there are plenty of things that I have a hard time getting used to in a positive manner--the space, the white walls, the one-piece bathtub for my cleaning convenience--but those aren't the things that we notice when we talk about something being different, are they? It's just so much harder than I expected it to be. I was always the one that my mother didn't have to worry about. I had a new best friend before I even started school in one place we lived--she still sends me birthday cards. It was easy to adapt then, but now it feels.. strained, and sore. I think every day that I have to give myself a break, but deep down I just feel like everything should be back to normal now. Normal is a hard concept for me, because it's so difficult to pinpoint. Is this normal already and I'm just not used to it, or is it by definition not normal again until I feel like it's normal? Troublesome. I don't have any answers, which probably means I should stop with the questions and curb my tendencies to analyze every single thing to death.

Still. It's hard to do that when one wakes up with one's feet hanging off the edge of the bed.