Trading Spaces

I drove past my old house the other day.

I drove past really slow to see if I could see the landscaping that I had done with the kids when we lived there. I slowed down almost to a stop and even considered peering into the kitchen to see if the same color that I had painted (red) was still there or not.

Sometimes, I think about old places that I've lived and I wonder about them. Is there still pieces of me left there, strewn all about, waiting for me to come back and retrieve them?

Moving is a big job. Not so much the physical aspect but the emotional as well. For awhile you don't live anyplace. You have parts of a life in one place and parts of a life someplace else. For a while you live fluidly, unconnected, strewn apart.

It's sometimes nice to consider where I lived and why and what I was doing when I lived there. How old were the kids? What did we do for dinner? Where was the furniture placed? Where we live molds our lives as much as anything. Molds our thoughts, too.

Not one time have I ever considered moving back to where I have come. Not one time have I ever thought, "wow, I'd really like to move back there". Not once. Even though the memories and the times shared were good ones, I'm most glad to be here, now, wherever this place "is".

I think that transitions teach us that we move forward into the unknown with a certain amount of gratitude that we're at least moving towards something, away from something that we once were.

But sometimes, there are situations and people that want us to stay in our old 'houses'. They might even want to drive us to the door and say, "get out and live here NOW!" I've had that sense at times with relationships and others...that their version of the past was so important that they wouldn't allow themselves -- or anybody else -- to move on.

To those situations and people, I am learning to say, "I don't live here anymore. You can stay here and we might can revisit these times, but I don't live here anymore. I'm moving onward."

I'm learning there is great freedom in that ability...to simply say, "No, I don't know the future as well as the past but I know that I don't live there anymore." Sometimes it allows others to move forward. Sometimes it makes them put down roots even more strongly.

It doesn't matter. What is important is that the journey forward begins and continues.

That was then, this is now. And I don't live there anymore.