Is moving a choice for most people? I have always hated moving. There were times when I chose to look at it as a chance to start over and make a new start, but mostly it is a disruption that interrupts my life. I always dreamed of having a home town, where I would belong, and always have a place to return to (or just stay). My parents have a home town. They grew up there, and they live there now. I remember visiting my grandparents there (all four of them, walking distance from one house to the other). But I have never lived there and don’t really even know my way around. But that wasn’t what I was planning to write about today.
Mostly, I had to move when my dad got transferred. Moving was stressful for my parents, who did most of the work, but it was traumatic for me because I was getting pulled up by the roots and had no control. As an adult, I have moved almost as often as I did as a child, and still it was not something that I had much control over. Usually it was related to my husband’s job (him getting a job or losing one), and my work if I had a job outside of the home was secondary and not enough to support the family. That has been the nature of women’s work – it is usually undervalued in multiple ways. And again, that was not what I intended to write about right now, although an important topic for another day.
The past eleven years, I have been more in charge of my own life than ever before and still tossed and thrown hear and there. I would have liked to have had a home of my own and finally some stability with that. I have not told much of the story of my life as an adult here yet, and I am not going to attempt to bring you up to date on all of that just yet, but I will summarize briefly that I was married for twenty years and divorced, which is a complicated story. At the time of the divorce, I was just completing my internship as a mental health counselor. I was at the very beginning of my career and did not have a secure position or reliable income at that point, or enough experience or confidence to get started with any kind of security or stability. Jumping to the point here, I found myself homeless for about a month, accepted a job in that was several hours distance from where my children were, and so I commuted each week out to work on a ranch in the middle of nowhere (it was a residential treatment center), and back to the county where my children still lived with their dad.
There were six years of not having my own home, renting a room and living in someone else’s home or with roommates. I was not technically homeless, but often felt that I was. I had an address and a place to sleep. But I didn’t belong, and I had no real stability. When I started to get comfortable, I would have to leave for some reason beyond my control. In some places I was the victim of emotional abuse. How many people in their forties run away from home? I did. Two houses were sold out from under me within a year. Economically, I didn’t think that I could have my own place. I will get into a bit of that in a future post too. And then I rented the place where I have been for the past five years. It is one side of a duplex. A lot of life has happened here, too. Five years is as long as i have ever been able to stay anywhere, with only one exception to that. And now this house has also been sold, and we have to move again. “We” referring to my current husband (of almost three years), Kev, and our pets and plants, … and somehow in this time we have ended up cramming two households worth of stuff in to this house.
This duplex was the first place where I ever lived alone. I started to feel like I was in control of my own life at times. That felt nice, but I soon got a roommate to help with expenses and because I didn’t need three bedrooms all by myself, which had been my plan when I rented this house. A lot of life has happened in these five years too. In this space. Some of it good, some of it painful. I had started to allow myself to think that maybe I had a home. This home has felt much less stable and secure the past few months as the landlords first became critical of my gardening and landscaping activities (they had told me that I could garden when I came here), and then showed up and literally attacked my herb garden, trying to destroy my plants, then they backed off for a short time, and then we found out that they were selling the property.
As a society, we seem to think that we have made progress in the area of “renter’s rights.” I am realizing that renters actually have very little by way of rights in this country. With thirty days notice, you can be asked to leave and have no real recourse. And with thirty days notice, renters are erased and forgotten.
Do you realize that the current housing market effectively shuts certain people out from having a home? If I were still single, I could go back to renting a room again. But to have a home for a couple, or a family? To be able to have pets, which are a part of the family? The biggest reason, besides stability, for me to rent this house rather than rent a room again five years ago was that I need pets. If you rent a room, they don’t have to let you have an emotional support animal, even if you have the documentation to have one. When you rent an entire apartment or home, many landlords want to prohibit pets, but they have to allow emotional support animals. It still may be a battle, but it is one that you will generally win. But the problem right now is that there are not homes available for rent hardly at all. And rental prices are higher than mortgage. And if you rent, then the rent that you pay does not contribute to future security in the form of home ownership.
I knew these things before, but did not have the option or ability to buy a house. I don’t know how anybody does that these days unless they already own property or have family or someone with the ability and desire to help them get started, which means a significant financial investment. Jumping through to get to the point again, I didn’t believe that I could own a home of my own, maybe not ever, because I don’t have those resources. I will just never be able to afford to retire. And I can’t afford to live past retirement age. People my age are already talking about retirement and some are starting to take early retirement, and I am struggling to buy a starter home. Not technically my first home – we owned three houses one after another in my first marriage – but this will for intents and purposes be my first home. And we are attempting to buy a home. I can’t trust that it will really happen. Maybe in two weeks we will be homeless. But I hope that it somehow does work out. And it would not be possible if a generous friend had not offered to help. I don’t know how to wrap my mind around that one.
So, I wanted to talk about stress, and how stress affects us, and also some resources for coping with stress. I think that I am going to have to try again tonight or tomorrow. I have been affected by the stress and trauma of this uncertainty and all of the stress and trauma that I associate with moving essentially since July, and as I attempt to write about it, I see it in my writing. It is very difficult to get to my point, or even to do any writing at all. I have been attempting to write this post for over a week. And this stress-induced writer’s block also makes it more difficult to do the writing that I need to do on a daily basis, which is an essential part of making a living for me. Also, I am watching as Kev gets to work on packing up the house and getting ready for the move, hearing him work at it, and if I try to help, I freeze and I am no help at all.
I will try to get back to this with another entry tonight or tomorrow. For now, let me summarize responses to stress. Most people have heard of “fight or flight.” There are two more categories. “Freeze,” and “fawn.” All of these various responses serve a purpose, but all of them can cause problems too. If you haven’t guessed by now, my typical response to stress is “freeze.” Freezing may help me to cope in the moment and generally not make things worse, but it is not very helpful when something needs to get done!
More about stress responses:
https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/fight-flight-freeze-fawn
Falling Through the Cracks - Can You See Me? 