Insomnia

I haven’t had this much trouble sleeping at night in a long time. Then again it has been awhile since my family and my life has felt this upside down.

Of course this time around our discombobulation is mostly for good reason — we are just days away from moving into our new house! This thought, this dream, of getting to start the rest of our lives together in our “forever home” (a term one of my old and dear college friends coined) is so very exciting! However it is also very overwhelming.

Change is often difficult to accept, even when it is the kind we want to happen in our lives. But as I shared in this post, in some ways I am having trouble letting go of our life and the memories we have made in this house. We have experienced so many amazing and bittersweet moments here over the past eight years.

In recent nights, when I find myself struggling with insomnia, it’s as though I am trying to squeak every last minute that I can out of this place that means so much to me, before we turn over the keys next week. I feel like I am trying to stop time, or at least buy myself a little bit more, before we literally move through this huge transition in our life.

When it’s quiet here, in the wee hours of the morning, and everyone else is asleep, that is when I tend to want to embrace these rare moments by myself, alone in this space that I won’t be living in for much longer.

I have always been a night owl, but since my husband and children are early risers, I have learned to adapt to their schedule, most of the time. However, over the past few weeks it has been harder than usual for me to fight my urges to stay up late, way beyond my bedtime (which is ironically when I tend to feel the most creative and inspired to write).

I was really feeling stuck in recent days and in many ways mourning leaving our current home until I received an email this morning from a family member, who wanted so show some pictures of our new house to another family member, who had not yet seen them. The family member asked that I resend a link to a Kodak Gallery album, that I had sent to our immediate family members back in October, after we had the inspection done on the house that we are moving into. I had taken a lot of pictures that day, so that I could remember every aspect and view of what we hoped and dreamed back then would be our home someday (and is going to be by this time next week).

After sending the link to our family member, I took some time to review the pictures myself. In doing so I remembered all the reasons we love the house that we are moving into so much. It reminded me how many wonderful things we have to look forward to in our new home and helped me to get to a place where I am better able to accept and make peace with the idea of saying goodbye to our current home. I appreciated the opportunity to re-frame the way I was looking at the experience of packing and preparing for our move today. It helped me to wrap, pack, tape and label with more energy and enthusiasm for the rest of the day and to spend less time lingering in my thoughts of all the beautiful and bittersweet memories we have made here over the years.

I imagine that I will continue to bounce and flow back and forth through these feelings and emotions over the next few days, as we finish our packing and moving preparations. I hope and intend to try to go to bed earlier tonight. I will do my best not to give in if and when parts of me want to stay up and process this experience in our life. I think I could really use a good night’s sleep and will need the rest and the energy to face another day of packing and preparing to move tomorrow.

Thank you for comments, support, encouragement, thoughts and prayers.

It’s hard for me to believe that this time next week (it all goes well) that we will be moved in (though far from unpacked, I am sure) and living in our “forever home!”

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