Moving is always a pain in the ass, as you have to touch every. single. thing. you own (or so it seems) before you decide what is actually making the cut for your new digs, what hits the trash and what you will give away.
Moving morphs me into a smoking wreck. And I don’t smoke. Ever.
Every relocation situation has emotions behind it – whether it’s excitement, anxiousness, fear, happiness – and as I found myself moving yet again this summer, I thought back on previous times when I transitioned to a new place. And each memory was accompanied by a specific song, which had really never dawned on me previously.
So here are anthems from a few of my life changing moves…
Relocating to Nashville with no job, an apartment waiting for me that I’d never laid eyes on and $900 bucks in my pocket, I packed up a U-Haul, put my cat on my lap and headed for a city where I didn’t know a single soul. I visited Nashville a week prior and spontaneously decided to give it a whirl. I didn’t have a ‘real’ job in Iowa with standard amenities (a regular paycheck and health insurance being examples), I didn’t have a ball and chain persuading me to settle down and pop out love children yet and it just seemed like the right time to make a big move.
Packing is so fun if you start the night before you leave.
While filled with exhilarating emotions, when the day came to actually leave the comforts of my family home and the wheels turned out of my driveway, I drove down I-80 with big, fat “what the F am I doing?!” tears rolling down my cheeks.
Little does this picture convey that I’m a water balloon waiting to burst inside of my SUV in a mere matter of seconds.
And what song was blaring on the stereo, aiding my sudden emotional insecurity of moving so far away from every familiar person in my life?
“Wide Open Spaces” by the Dixie Chicks.
Cliché? Hell yes. Did it make me feel better? Oh F yes.
Carrying on like a bawl baby, acting as if I would never see my home state of Iowa again, singing along with the song…
“Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s (me sniffing) never left (I wipe my snotty nose) home (I begin bawling), who’s never struck out (now crying so hard can’t catch breath)
To find a dream (me wailing) and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone”
I think every trucker I passed and glanced down at my car thought about running me off the road to put me out of my own misery. But at the end of that long weekend move, I was excited, scared and ready to take on Nashville with all of the gusto a young gal such as myself could muster.
First ‘real’ apartment and it’s mine. All mine.
As life happens, I found a job within the first week of my move, met friends, joined a band, found a boy I shacked up with and all seemed to be falling into place. Except when it didn’t several years in. I lost my job, vacated the shared house with my boyfriend and ended up getting to move in with my parents (every adult child’s dream come true) all in the same week. To say that it was epic shit show is an understatement.
A year full of hot mess and mascara stained cheeks that forced me to laugh at my ridiculousness.
The world seemed to cave in, the sky fell down and the Earth under my feet was ripped from beneath me. I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t catch a break. Not only was I reeling from a difficult break-up (I’d been with this man longer than some gal pals had their husbands) I couldn’t believe I had given my blind loyalty to friends only to have them vacate as soon as I needed them or even worse, take advantage of my trust when I was most vulnerable. Valuable life lessons learned and true friends left standing. Oh snap!
The song that played on constant repeat this time around?
“Grenade” by Bruno Mars with a doozy of a chorus that goes like this…
“I’d catch a grenade for you
Throw my hand on a blade for you
I’d jump in front of a train for you
You know I’d do anything for you
Oh, I would go through all this pain
Take a bullet straight through my brain
Yes, I would die for you, baby
But you won’t do the same”
I was able to get through the tough year with family, best friends, running my ass off and any liquor I could get my hands on (the always oh-so-healthy coping mechanism).
Car bomb shots with cousins seemed like such a good idea…
Until they went down the hatch…
Of course when my liver dried out and I was able to eek out the funds to make the move into my mini manse after 10 months of parental living, the song blaring from every available speaker was “Fuck You,” by Cee Lo Green, which has pretty much become my life anthem (side note, please play at my funeral if I should die before you. Thanks).
And now for my recent humdinger of a move…
Feeling kind of like a card-carrying adult, I was thinking at this point in my life the next step for me would be to move into a bona-fide house (or at the very least a spanky condo) and I was very happy in the small duplex I was renting, which is where I planned to stay until the timing was right for me to leave. But instead, I got kicked out of my mini manse duplex two months ago when the land lord’s son knocked up his girlfriend and they needed to expand to my side. Rough news, as I lacked the funds moving requires and the last thing I wanted to spend what little savings I had on first and last month’s rent, pet deposits, utility transfer fees, endless tanks of gas, etc….
Oh you need me to move ASAP? Let me just get my trusty shirt, sunglasses to wear inside due to swollen, shit show eyes and get drunk first. Thanks.
The Rolling Stones helped me get through this past summer move with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
“You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You just might find
You get what you need”
The lyrics continue to remind me that while at a forced proverbial fork in the road, intoxicated by my life’s sudden and unexpected twists and plot changes, I just might find that in the end of this chapter I will get what I need (or at least I F’ing better!) – I just wish I knew what that was going to be…(patience is definitely not a virtue in which I’m familiar).
I’ll keep you posted.
Until my next moving anthem presents itself, I’ll be cranking up the Cee Lo and rockin’ out to my life’s theme song as I continue to unpack by touching every. single. thing. I own.
CBXB
Cowboys and Crossbones 