How to Move To Another State and Barely Keep Your Sanity

Let me start out by saying that I'm very lucky. I'm lucky my husband has a job in this terrible economy. I'm lucky he is not in the military serving our country, unable to see his family for months. I'm lucky to have healthy children and a roof over our heads. With all that said, as my title infers, I've left the city I've known for 35 years and moved to another state, and I have barely kept my sanity. But I still have some of it and this is how I managed to salvage it.

So, Chicago. That's all I need to say. If you are from Chicago you know what I'm getting at here. I've lived in Chicago my whole life and I've loved every second of it. I've been going to White Sox games since I was five, have been up in the Sears Tower (the only name it could ever be called) on countless school trips and dates, and have gotten my car towed from too many city streets. The skyscrapers are our mountains and the lake is our ocean.

An adventure! A new life! The chance to start over! That's what the cheering section said about my impending move to the hot southern state of Texas. My husband was offered a job which brought more money, so the decision was made. The only problem was I didn't want a new life and I was not interested in starting anything over. I was up for an adventure however, and that's how I had to look at it. So I packed it all up. My beds, my couches, lamps and dressers. These were the easy things. It was the photos on my walls and the memories in each room that I had trouble with. And of course there were the things i couldn't pack up: the friends I'd had for years, my grandma and my mother, my neighbors who helped pass the boring suburbian days away. Then the letting go...the small connections you make in your haven, like the lady who remembers your name at the bank. I didn't know how long I'd be gone on this adventure and I already wanted to be back soon.

Texas is hot. It's so hot that you melt upon stepping out the door. It was summer and that made it worse. You'll love the winters though! (said the cheering section) But I was a city girl. I loved boots and sweaters and coats, and snowfall that closed schools for days. There would be none of that here. When we pulled up to the house that I had only seen in pictures I cried. It was not my house. When we walked in the door and it didn't smell like my house I cried. I cried and I cried and I didn't stop crying for weeks. Are you wondering when I'm going to answer the question of how I kept my sanity? Well at this point, I didn't know how I was going to.

Did I mention that I have three children? Yes, three beautiful children that relied on ME as their stay at home mother for happiness and reassurance that all would be ok. This was the hardest part. To put on a happy front for them.

But that's exactly what I did. I stopped being selfish and thinking about all the things I would miss about Chicago and my "old life" and started to embrace my new one. It was all on the outside of course, for them, while on the inside I was still crying. But then I realized, warming up the car here meant letting it run with the air condtioning on for awhile and that sitting on the porch swing with our green texas backyard view, smoking a cigarette of course, wasn't so bad. Our house reminded me of a summer cottage and we had a beach only 5 minutes away. I talked to my friends and family everyday and kept pictures of my old home all over my new home. I still cried and got anxious and angry and lonely, but my happy front was working only BECAUSE i let myself cry and get anxious, angry, and lonely. So I regained my sanity by letting myself lose my sanity.

That's how it's working out for today at least. I'm know we'll be back in Chicago, I'm sure of it. And I'll appreciate those snowy days a little bit more, and I will visit my ocean a little more often. But for now I'm making friends with the lady at the Starbucks up the street who seems to know exactly how I take my coffee.