mouse

Today I cried. All day.

Yep. All day. And most of the day yesterday.

I think the weight of what we left behind hit me today.

The house. The food. The friends. The neighborhood. The comfort. Predictability. All of it is coming in like a flood.

We have been gone from home for 3 weeks. We have now moved 6 times. 3 of those unexpected. I know, we should probably figure this out.

Apparently, this last move was the final straw for me that released the emotional flood gates.

In 5 short days, I grew to love our Paris apartment. (lucky number 5). I felt very comfortable there.

The courtyard. Oh my gosh, the courtyard. It was everything I ever dreamed a Paris courtyard would be. The perfect amount of blues and greens mixed in with old architecture, beautiful floors, interesting and winding stair cases. Window boxes and half open windows with curtains blowing in the breeze. I can picture it right now. We were really lucky. It was perfect.

The apartment. It had stone walls and walls of old iron and glass. Beautiful, old character. The kitchen was all glass. It was tiny and when it rained water would come in through the window at the top, but it was perfectly quirky. It had a washing machine-practical but amazing. I had the best time hanging our clothes on racks. The space was small, but we made do. The kids like sleeping in the same room anyway. And even in our 4000 square foot house in North Carolina, the kids were always in the same room we were in, and somehow, it’s more tolerable in a 500 sq ft space. There was no aircon but we figured it out and it’s cool now, so we were just fine.

The street. When the taxi dropped us off, we couldn’t believe we had gotten so lucky. It was everything I dreamed a street in Paris would be. And we got to stay there. For 12 nights! There was life everywhere. Beautiful people everywhere. Cafes, and stands with fruits and fish, sardine carts and ice cream carts, and a mixture of Parisians and tourists all dining on the street morning to night. Perfectly Paris.

Cue the mouse.

Yep, our perfect apartment had a mouse. Or mice. We tried to ignore it. I had seen signs but I tried to tell myself that these were probably old. But 1, 2, 3 in the same morning and not a good solution on the horizon, and we had to go.

1.     I found mouse droppings around a kid’s bed. Yeah. No go.

2.     A mouse jumped out of Nick’s jeans as he was putting them on.

3.     A mouse ran through the kids’ feet in the living room.

Yeah, none of those were good. Even with all of this it still took me a little bit to pull the trigger and leave. But we did. We left that same day.

We packed up all of our stuff, again, and moved across to the city.

Our new apartment is about 20 minutes away. It is on a street and it has a courtyard. I think if I were to start here, I might feel different. But now I am starting with different expectations. A different experience of comfort.  

I am trying to be thankful for our new apartment here. It is clean. It’s bigger, and it has aircon.

But it’s not beautiful. I can’t compare it in any way to the former. Not the street, or the courtyard, or the apartment.

Clearly, that thing about “Comparison is the thief of joy,” yeah it’s true and sometimes it’s hard to avoid.

So, I’ve cried for 2 days.

Sounds awful, I know.

I don’t even like the way writing all this down makes me feel.

In all honesty, I don’t think my emotions have much to do with the apartment or the mouse.  I’m usually a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” gal. I take great pride in pushing through or making the most of something. But I think my body and tears are telling me it’s time for change. Internal change. That is, after all, why we are on this adventure. We’re taking drastic measures to force big change. Change in our family as a whole, and in each of us, individually.

It’s time for release and healing. For sincerity and vulnerability. Maybe all of these tears are years of stuffed emotions and quieted thoughts. Maybe it’s a cleansing that needs to happen. Without the insulation comfort brings, all that is packed in and left in the dark will be brought into the light. And, well, we have put ourselves in a position where that is likely to happen.

This isn’t always going to be a pretty process. I know tears can be beautiful. A beautiful release with the most lovely, sensitive piano soundtrack playing gently in the background. Blehhh. My tears aren’t beautiful like that. I’m not a beautiful crier. If I cry at any point in the day my nose stays red for the whole day, and my eyes stay swollen. And I hate that they are even present. I didn’t invite them, and I have asked them to leave, and yet they are still here.   

The tears will stop at some point. I need to be Mom, after all, and that is quite hard when tears are streaming down my face. I know how fortunate we are to even be here. To have this opportunity as a family. I am rehearsing all of the blessings and things to be thankful for. I know this will pass. After all, we’re moving again in 7 days. House number 6 here we come.

So, maybe I should thank the mouse. He gave me the opportunity to jump start this process. To lean into the change and learn the lessons.  

Nope, not today.