Oct
Just Be
I’ve hated where I live for a long time now. Ever since the yuppie-types started moving back to the city and driving up real estate prices and building McMansions and blocking my view of traffic with their Hummers and destroying every bit of character this area ever had, I’ve wanted to move away.
Having written about it on my personal blog and whined about it to my husband ad nauseum, I’ve become very invested in my unhappiness here, holding onto it like a child holds onto a baby blanket and refusing to let go.
My misery of the present and my hope for the future have equally sustained me while I’ve planned and schemed and longed and dreamed for a life someplace else. A place with sidewalks and a neighborhood full of children and a front porch and a big backyard and friendly neighbors and all the other things we don’t have.
But moving right now, with the real estate market in such a death spiral, would be foolish. Plus, my husband will only consider moving to California where housing is so overpriced I fear we would be apartment-dwellers for the rest of our lives.
And then there’s the fear of uprooting my daughter who is firmly planted in a good school with good friends and a sense of continuity and familiarity. When she was a bit younger, it would have been easier but now? Not so much.
And then there’s my mother-in-law, who just lost my father-in-law. Can we really just up and leave her? Probably not.
But the scariest thing of all is this feeling that I’ve been fighting recently. This feeling that maybe it’s not as bad as I make it out to be, that there are plenty of good reasons to stick around, that this place is somehow becoming home.
The other day, it was a lovely cool fall afternoon (today it’s hellish again!) and as I sat on my back porch looking outside I was overcome with a feeling of great contentment and peace. For that moment in time, I couldn’t think of a single reason to harbor any discontent and I wondered why I have spent so much time imagining greener pastures and a brighter horizons elsewhere.
I don’t understand these feelings as they are completely antithetical to what I’ve been holding on to for so long.
Could I be happy here in this place where we will probably never be able to afford more than this two bedroom house in a neighborhood with no sidewalks or kids? Where category 4 hurricanes have threatened us in the past? Where property taxes and insurance are obscenely high?
I don’t know.
All I do know is that something inside is telling me to stop fighting against being content.
To just be happy.
To just be.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 9:10 am by Izzy
Author's Biography: I’m a work-at-home mother of two who resides, reluctantly, in Florida. I hope to someday live somewhere more progressive but until then I continue to bide my time by searching locally for intelligent life, buttwiping, carpooling and thinking of ways to get out of cooking dinner for my very patient and understanding family. My turn-ons include kingsize beds, room-darkening shades and white noise machines. I am the founder of Moms Speak Up and founder/editor of Props and Pans, as well as a graphic designer who moonlights designing blogs to help support my Target habit. I can also be found at my personal blog, IzzyMom.com.
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I used to feel like this all of the time. “My misery of the present and my hope for the future have equally sustained me while I’ve planned and schemed and longed and dreamed for a life someplace else.” Sooooo been there. These days I’m feeling pretty good, just being.
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:21 amI know the feelings.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 pmVery well said and probably the most productive step you can take. Even if one day you move and find yourself at your happiest, you can look back and know that you spent your time much happier than you could have.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:38 pmAs a fellow Floridian, I feel you on this one. I’m nearly bi-polar when it comes to my love/hate for Miami. I would love to leave, but the thought of separating my son from his entire family kills me. So I understand.
The other part, though, about accepting that contentment? Yes, that’s it. If your other option is to hold on to the negative to the point that it affects your quality of life or the way you see things, then yes.
Of course, I’m not advocating that you just embrace it and forget the negative, either. Just that you accept what you have and find the positives and focus more on those. There will come a point when the timing is right to make the move out. Until then, enjoy the now.
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:45 pmI think the art of “just being” is one of the most difficult. But those moments of contentment, even if they are fleeting, are at least signals that we can be happy. We just have to unlock to riddle. And it sounds like you have started.
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:25 pm“just be.”
I love that.
And I live in a similar neighborhood. But the good is most definitely there with the bad.
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:48 pmIt IS so hard to just be content. My husband and I have lived in 4 rentals in the last 5 years (mostly in the same area, moving as we can afford to). Every step is a step better, but there are always things wrong, things that could be better, different (more structurally sound, too). We ALMOST just bought a townhouse (row-house) but decided we couldn’t do it financially and to maybe look again when our current lease is close to being up next June and we’ve whittled away more student loan and car debt. The place we considered was REALLY nice…and now it’s even harder to ignore all the “issues” our current place has. But there are things I WILL miss when we do move (like the biggest living room ever) so I’m trying to enjoy the things I LIKE rather then focus on the things I don’t. It’s hard…but ultimately healthier… (P.S. Thank you Izzy for you-know-what!
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 amI never thought I could be content in the town in which I currently live.
And then one day I looked around and realized that it had happened without my realizing it.
Funny, that.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:08 amI can totally relate to this Izzy. Great post! It’s so hard being content with our lives.
(And CONGRATS on the Parents Podcast!)
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:51 pmCongrats on the Parents’ blog of the Month. How cool.
Sometimes its so very difficult to “just be.” Then one day when you have a moment to yourself, you realize, “I’ve learned how to do that.”
Congrats on that life lesson too.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:05 pm“My misery of the present and my hope for the future have equally sustained me while I’ve planned and schemed and longed and dreamed for a life someplace else.” Wow. I have recently been there (not sure I’m not STILL there) and I could not have expressed it better! Living in California, I understand your fear of apartment-dwelling forever. It’s ridiculous here. We barely managed to get in before it went completely out of range for us and who knows if we’ll ever be able to move. So I look at my ginormous master bedroom and I am grateful instead of looking at my patio/no yard or thinking about the astronomical mortgage and being bitter. The grass will always look greener somewhere else. But you have to wonder what’s under there if the grass is so green…septic tank, maybe? I’m just sayin’…
October 25th, 2007 at 8:08 amI think everyone deals with restlessness, a desire to be somewhere else, a fresh start. I know I do. Constantly. But there is so much good here, where I live. And maybe we will move one day, but until we do, I’m trying to teach myself to soak up the life I have, in the place I live. It’s tough and it doesn’t come naturally. Thanks for the reminder.
October 25th, 2007 at 9:43 am