Separation-Anxiety

My husband is dying for a new job, and honestly, I don’t blame him.  For the past few months, his job has become more and more stressful and I’m starting to worry about his health.  He comes home after a 10 hours of frustration and is a ball of anxiety and grumpiness for most of the evening.  By the time he’s unwound a bit, it’s time to go to bed.

For that reason, I’m being very supportive of his decision to start searching for a new job.  He’s handed over his resume to a recruitment agency, and I’ve been scouring the ‘wanted’ ads for something hopefully close to home and within his desired price range.

Yesterday, he texts me to tell me he’s got a call from a competing company offering him a job.  Its $40k more a year than he makes now… plus moving expenses.  The catch?  It’s a 14-hour drive from where we currently live – and it’s in the middle of nowhere. 

I don’t think I could do it.  To be 14-hours away from my family?  From my friends?  From my nieces and future nephew?  I’d be in a depressive funk within weeks.

Maybe if it was a temporary contract – say a year.  Maybe even two years I could survive as long as I could fly out and see my family once a month for a week.  But, a permanent job in the middle of nowhere?  I don’t think so.

The offer is so tempting though.  With the sale of our house and having all our expenses paid for us, we would be able to get out of debt instantly and have a nice little savings account.  No debt and money for a down-payment on a home where we live.  Money to travel.  Money to do all the things we want to do in the next year or two before we have children.  It’s so tempting.  But, is it worth my mental sanity?  I’m pretty attached to my family… to the thrice-weekly visits with my parents.  Could I survive being so far away?  I know lots of people do it, but I’m not sure I can.

Sometimes I wish I was more adventurous.  That I was willing to take risks.  That I wasn’t such a coward. 

What would it take..?

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I’m addicted to the Home & Garden Network.  I watch more than just the decorating shows… my favorites are really those shows where other people are looking to buy a home, and I get to peek in at what homes look like in different cities, and how much they cost.  In some places the house prices are ridiculously low – at least compared to where I live.

So, I fantasize about moving to those places – to owning a ‘dream’ home with a much smaller mortgage than we currently are straddled with.

I think if I picked a place and told AMP that I wanted to move there, and could find us jobs, he’d do it.  In a heartbeat.  Well, as long as it was finacially feasible, after all I’m married to an accountant.

I, on the other hand, prefer to fantasize.  Because, push come to shove it would take a whole hell of a lot to make me move… like the ability to move my entire family (or at least the members I like), definitely my nieces, and my best friends.  Or, in lieu of that, to own a private jet that would cost me nothing to travel back and forth at a moment’s notice.

As much as my family may drive me crazy, I could not imagine living far away from them.  I like how I can just ‘drop by’ and have lunch with one of my aunts.  I love the afternoons spent at my parents place.  I love coffee dates with cousins.  Or girl’s nights with friends I’ve known since I was 8.

I don’t like change.  I’m not good at meeting new people and making new friends – hence why my strongest friendships are with people I’ve known forever.   

Which means my options are:
a) Convince all my family to move with me to wherever I decide
b) Find someone to gift me a private jet, plus pay all related costs
c) Stay here, and just live vicariously through my shows

I think I’m going to be here a while…

 

This post inspired by Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop: What would it take for you to pick up and move?  Go visit and read some amazing posts. :)

 

wonderful, wonderful weekend

Let’s talk about my exciting and eventful weekend, shall we?  Well, I’ll talk; feel free to tune me out.

First, my younger (and only) brother got married this past weekend.  The wedding was beautiful, lots of fun, and they had gorgeous weather, if a little on the cold side.   I got to be a bridesmaid for the first time ever, and I was even paired up with AMP, as he was a groomsman.  We ate a delicious never-ending Italian dinner, drank lots of yummy drinks (I may have spilled a few towards the end) and danced the night away. 

Second, my brother-in-law has moved out of our house, into a place of his own 15 minutes away.

I’m honestly not sure how much I’ve talked about this situation, but here’s a quick breakdown.  Summer of 2009 AMP and I bought a house.  It has an unfinished basement that we planned to finish and rent out.  AMP decided that he had a job opening at his work for his younger brother, and that his brother would move out here from his hometown, and he would live in the finished basement.  It seemed like a great idea, but I was quite adamant that there was no way the brother (let’s call him BIL) was going to move in till the basement was completely done, or at most a month or so away from completion.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way.  The job was an immediate opening, and in October, BIL started coming over for a few days at a time to work and learn his job.  He officially moved in to our house in December.  Work on the basement started – we hit a few snags with the City, and that lengthened the process.  Months were going by, and the living situation had started to get very frustrating.  Of course it was.  It was a difficult situation after all, AMP and I still being ‘newly’ married, and his brother is an introverted person who only had a tiny bedroom to escape to.  Also, BIL is spoiled, the youngest sibling of 4, who was doted on and not really used to pulling his own weight around the house.  He helped out some… But, anyways, let’s move on.  AMP was excited to finally get to spend some time with his brother, since with a 9-year age gap, BIL was not even a teenager when AMP moved out of the house and 3 ½ hours away.

Fast-forward to now, 10 months after BIL moved in, the basement is finally at dry-walling stage, looks like the end is within reach, and I get told that BIL has decided to start looking for his own place.  I was a little upset at first – not to have BIL move out, because I was totally ok with that, but because it seemed like it was out of nowhere, and a little strange that it was happening now, when the basement was so much closer to being completed.  I found out on Wednesday of last week that BIL was looking at places, on Saturday he had moved out. 

And now I’m incredibly excited.  It’s so nice to have the house back to ourselves, I can finally run around naked if I want to – well at least after AMP fixes the furnace so the house stops being at glacier temperature.  And, it’s actually fun to spend time with my brother-in-law again, now that at the end of the day he returns to his own place.

So, that was my exciting weekend (and this will count as my ‘happy’ post that I owed you from last week!).

Sifting through the Past

The thing about moving is, you always find little pieces of history and memories laying around, waiting to be discovered. Or at least if you are a pack rat like me, who dreads throwing anything out, in case I may “need” it one day.

After a year-and-a-half of being married (and thus, a year-and-a-half since I moved out of my parents house), I was kindly informed that it was time to move all my belongings from their house. I don’t even know how I got away with keeping things there that long – probably because my parents realized how small the place was – but when we moved into the new house, I was left with no excuses.

Of course, I didn’t simply throw away all the items that I clearly hadn’t used or ‘needed’ in the past year-and-a-half – no, I decided to sort through everything.

Lo and behold, pieces of my past came crashing through.

A few were welcome – childhood memorabilia, old writing projects… But then there were the items from past relationships. Now, my dating history isn’t vast. There was a summer romance for a French boy – which was definitely more trouble than it was worth. And there was Bob (not his real name) – the only other guy I’d ever dated. Bob and I had been together 2 years, on and off. On for year-and-three-quarters or so, then I broke up with him, and then I followed a mad, and very dumb, impulse to get back together with him for a month or so after a summer apart. Bob and I were wrong for each other. I was young and unaware of what I wanted in life – he was a few year’s older and knew exactly how he wanted me to be – even if that’s not what I wanted.

The relationship is old news. We broke up when I was 19 – almost 6 years ago. I’ve been married 2 years, and he’s been married a few months now. So, when I stumbled across the locket he gave me for our one-year dating anniversary – I felt like I opened a cupboard to the past.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t care for him anymore. I’m madly in love with A and there’s no room for anyone else. Sure, Bob will always be special in that first boyfriend kind of way, but that is all. And truly that wasn’t the issue. The issue was, I knew it was in the past, A knows it’s in the past – so is it wrong to wear a locket that an old boyfriend gave me?

My heart says yes. A says to do whatever I feel like doing. He’s not the jealous type really, or at least he wouldn’t admit it. But, I feel it’s disloyal. And yet, it’s beautiful and I’d always wanted a locket, so I can’t bring myself to throw it out.

I’ve dabbled with the idea of giving it away. I had offered to give it back to Bob when we broke up, but he refused. I’ve thought of giving it to one of my nieces, but that seemed strange. To keep it for a future daughter that may or may not be, also seemed very strange. That is what I will do with pieces A gave me, not a person that has no meaning to me any more.

The locket will always remind me of Bob – so should I just keep it tucked away in a box of the past – or is that like I’m not letting go of the past? I don’t feel like I’m holding on to Bob, or the idea of Bob, but would keeping the locket seem like I am? Is it wrong to keep mementos and pictures of the past, or should they be tossed, burned, discarded?

These are questions I struggle with.

And, that is why I wish it had continued to be “lost” and then no decision would have to be made.

 

- Inspired by prompts 1 & 4 of this week’s  Sleep is For the Weak Writing Workshop.