Moving

I have moved a lot throughout the years and that has become a little bit of a trauma in my life. The lack of stability, of roots, as they say, has impacted the way I think and my efforts to integrate into new groups. There was a time when moving became as normal as going to the loo :) Well, not as often, but you get the picture. Having to let go and to start anew became routinely almost but the sorrow, the discomfort and insecurity seemed to take larger proportions and to get increasingly numbing at the same time.

My greatest worries were: how long am I going to be in this place for? will I afford to keep paying for it? where will I shelve all my books? what clothes can I get rid of before the move? how many times will I have to repeat the story of who I am, why and how I got there and what are my plans for the future? will it be cold in winter? how will I get along with the people I live with? how far is the library from where I live?

Now: it's a little bit different when you move to and within a foreign country. I guess one of the big differences is that moving has been a little less stressful in England rather than within Romania. For some reason, England equals freedom to me. I am as "bereft of material possessions" in Blighty as I was back home but I feel more... carefree, for lack of a better way of expressing the feeling. I guess it's because Romania still bears some dark associations in my head - with persistent feelings of inadequacy that I wasn't aware of and not knowing or not being aware of something makes everything worse. The UK, with its politically correct culture, has offered access to understanding and thus to knowing why I feel the way I feel.

Sometimes I'd wake up and not remember exactly where I was. I'd try desperately to make the place where I'd "landed" feel like "home". The feeling of not belonging anywhere, of not finding your place is daunting.

When I was 18, I moved into a room right across from the high school building into one of those old and cold houses with tall walls and very little light that Brasov is heaving with (the view that I had from my window was of a very narrow road leading to a cemetery and a mental health hospital). I laid in bed for a nap after tidying all up and started crying. The thought that this is not a punishment came into my mind and I calmed down. I had moved on my own and was resenting my parents for not being there for me. (Little did I know that they were struggling at home...)

The time when I really got "fed up" with moving was in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. I had left a very unhappy situation and came into the life of a family of 8 that taught me that home, well, you take it with you wherever you go. Home is not necessarily a physical place. It's a state of mind rather. If home is security, then if I feel secure I can feel at home. Feeling at home depends on me really. It's accepting and letting go of the past, mourning for a while for what was lost but then tidying yourself up to look the Future squarely in the face. Home is accepting that mistakes and sadness are part of the natural course of life and that dreading them will make experiencing them even more intense than they really are.