omnia_mutantur | "mostly we've been living here uninjured"

I feel permanently poised on the brink of a paralyzing anxiety attack. I'm not seeking medication or therapy to deal with this, and instead lie awake listening to my heartbeat accelerate and trying to find stories to tell myself about what the next chunk of happily-ever-right-now looks like. Change is somewhere on the horizon, and not the gradual seachange of growing older and even better together, but the more drastic changing of entire lifestyles (which sounds weirdly to me like I'm equating relocating with giving birth, but I don't really feel like exploring that metaphor so I'll forge blindly ahead).

We're hoping to move to Boston, mostly to find Light a job he likes better, but also to be closer to Junkyard and B and eventually Mech, and also to find ourselves another rhythm in which to live. We talk, occasionally, about me not working, taking time to find a job, figuring out what I might enjoy doing, and I've never had that luxury before, never had the savings or the stability not to just jump upon whatever offered me enough money for rent and student loans. And I've stagnated here at the hospital, becoming very good at doing all the things that no one else wants to or can do, but it's certainly neither enjoyable nor fulfilling. And I know that years from now, if I look back upon things I regret not having done, it's certainly not going to be not having worked at this particular hospital even longer.

I've been at my current place of employment since August of 2001. Secretly, I think I keep expecting to get rewarded for loyalty, and while some (my boss) might argue minuscule raises and everincreasing responsibility, I feel pretty unrewarded. But I also feel like I'm supposed to stay loyal, spend the rest of my life being miserable here in the basement of a dirty building, stifling both the tears and the rage, because no one else will ever hire me and I should be grateful that the hospital did. Which is a bit of a hurdle to jump both when trying to imagine giving notice (because I gloss it as a betrayal and a failure on my part) and trying to imagine what I want to do next.

So far in my life, I've been best at finding the most comfortable compromise between a number of bad choices, so having an wide open world terrifies, but any words I might use to talk about that terror sound self-indulgent and whiny. Poor me, to have so much freedom. But the things that are happening aren't the sort I have the language or experience for, selling a house, buying another house, moving all our stuff, reorganizing our finances.

I also am having possession-anxiety, wherein I adore my stuff but somehow the fact I can't throw it all in a junker car means that I've either abandoned some important, unnamed ideal and/or become stodgy. That said, I am also deeply appreciative of the fact that I am now of an age/income where it's feasible to hire movers rather than have my husband throw his back out again.

And this doesn't even begin to address the oft-repeated trope of will I figure out how be sane when all the day-to-day changes.

So, yeah. Change.