A New World

It has been five days since we moved in to this co-housing community. I can't tell if it feels like a year or an hour. It's been great in some ways, overwhelming in others, utterly shaking in some and inspiring in others. In short, we are feeling a lot of emotions!

It often seems to turn out, fortunately, that Ryan and I have our panic moments at different times. The days leading up to our move-in were tough for Ryan. He was second guessing our decisions, was worried about this co-housing community, wasn't sure it was a good move. Anxiety was pulling at him, bringing him back to the basic arguments against our big changes that we had to fight through early on. 

Then we moved in, and he relaxed. No, he got excited. He started saying, "I want to meet people!" and "I want to get out there and get involved!" Cue my turn for panic.

So I started strong. I was excited to move in. Those days of Ryan's heightened anxiety were a wonderful reprieve for me from nearly three weeks of feeling low and disconnected from our vision, from God, from really anything at all. I was weary from packing and moving out; I was missing our neighbours; I was worrying that we wouldn't see our good friends who we were moving away from as often as I hoped; I was sad about the loss of our next door neighbours (who we dropped in on a good number of times after we left!); and I was not handling "homelessness" very well. 

I felt particularly ashamed of that last one. I am indeed a rich westerner who has been privileged enough to never have been homeless in her life. It made me think of those who don't have a home, or a permanent home, or who are forced out of their homes. Not easy for them. And it was not easy for me.

Another stark and shameful realization for me: the fact that I REALLY MISSED MY COMPUTER. Seriously. I felt disjointed and un-collected. I felt like my grounding computer that had all the information I needed on it was no longer at my disposal and I was just flailing around without all that I needed. It's so weird. What the heck? Aren't I the one who's always talking about cutting back, NAY, cutting off technology? I know I go too far to the extreme sometimes, but honestly, it was shocking how hard it was to be away from the computer. 

Okay, but on Tuesday we moved in, people in the community dropped in here and there, we met some kids and our girls were as happy as pie running amok with them all, with this unexpected freedom of having the run of the entire building and property! Honestly! I thought we were meaning to DOWNSIZE, but this has just added such a huge dimension to our living space, and particularly to the girls' play space!

But of course, I started panicking. Yep, as Ryan relaxed and got excited, I took my turn. Worries. Homesickness. Exhaustion. It all caught up to me and I felt shaken for a few days. I would close the door into the community, lower the blinds, and take a deep breath. It felt good to hide in certain moments. It also felt good to open the door and walk down to check our mailbox, to be out, to say hello to those I passed by. Thankfully, I'm feeling better today. But you know what that means...Ryan's starting to feel shaken again.

Sigh! It's a wild time. It's a good, but wild time. Our place is almost unpacked. Ryan goes back to work in the morning. Life will take on a more regular pace for another week before we head off out of town again on holidays the following week. But I think we're going to like it here. I think it will be challenging and great. 

In the next post I'll give you all a bit of a tour and low-down on what things are like here! Woo hoo!!