The Move - Part One, Getting Ready

The older I get the more I like learning. Even if its just different opinions, different viewpoints, from different people. I love reading and finding new blogs. I've found a few new ones recently that I want to follow, they are on the sidebar. I also started reading Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time." Fascinating.

Yesterday we paid all the move-in costs for the apartment and signed the lease. We get the keys on Wednesday. It is all very bittersweet for me. I'm excited about the new place, but its hard to leave the old one. I know it will be a good thing, but it is still hard. So many rules, I am so used to my own space, doing my own thing. No rules. I guess thats the root of my problems, no rules. So I am going to embrace the rules.

This move is the start of a whole different way of life for Royce and me and the kids. We have lived so differently for so long. We will have to live with rules, and deadlines, organization and structure that I have never implemented. I hope I can do it. I have to do it. I've been trying to prepare myself for the structure that is about to happen. I have relied on my mom for so many basic things, and have just let the other things deteriorate. The condition of my home, and life, is so bad right now. Broken. Thats the only way to describe it. The details are so embarrasing I won't even write them down. But I am determined to change it all. It will entail bedtimes, homework times, cooking dinner, regular daily housekeeping, making school lunches, getting everyone ready in the mornings. It will involve a routine. This is what I let my mom do for so long, and it is way past time for me to grow up and do it. I am looking forward to it, but scared I will fail. Also living on a budget. I have NEVER done this. Just spent when I felt like it and put things off. And now this is where I am. I am having more anxiety about this, true anxiety, than I can express. Writing helps. Thats why I am writing about it.

We will start moving things into the apartment this weekend, and also other things to the storage unit. So far it has been a very well planned out move. Unlike when we up and left for Prescott. Little bipolarish there. I know that what is wrong with me has alot to do with the decisions I have made over the past say 5 years (lets face it my whole life - they just have been very destructive over the last 5 years). Destructive decisions. But now I know what is wrong, and I refuse to be the typical whiney, drama-filled, blame it on someone else, psycho, borderline manipulative victim that I associate "bipolar" with - like the patients at work. I refuse. I realize now that I have a huge problem with impulse control and mood control. Knowing what is wrong is half the battle for me. But let me say, being bipolar sure has taken its toll on me. I refuse to let it destroy me anymore.

The waiting to move in is agonizing.

It helps me cope to visualize what I want. How I would want things to be if I could have them that way. I want evenings cooking in the kitchen, listening to jazz, with some nice wine. Movie nights with the kids, on a great couch. Story time at night. Friends over with great food and great conversation. Shopping at Sprouts and Whole Foods. Great colors in the house, great dishes and silverware. Peace. Fluffy comforters and down pillows for the kids. Waking up in the morning feeling good. Really good. Day bicycle trips with Royce. Jogging in the evening. A regular Yoga routine and class. Quiet yoga in my own living room. Quiet days where I cuddle up in my nice living room, and just read for hours. Reading lots and lots of books. New ones. Old ones.

We make more than enough money to live this way. Simply, but good. Quality. Its just a matter of structure. My biggest 4 letter word.

I know I am putting my dirty laundry out there by writing all of this. But I have to remind myself that this blog was always and still is for ME. Writing always helps me. And it may be the one thing that gets me through this move.

This move is the biggest mirror I have had - the biggest thing that makes me really look at myself and what I have done. Its all right there in my face with consequenses. I can't run from it or ignore it anymore.

I can do this.