More on Moving: Feeling all the Feels

 Sad Quinny ('cause her milk baba was drained too fast) and Happy Quinny ('cause the grass at the Getty is perfection).

Moving makes me feel all the feels much more than is comfortable. Sad seconds seem all-consuming and never-ending, funny times have me laughing to unreasonable tears, worrying over little things and unchangeables have me losing sleep and stomach-sick with anxiety and happy moments make me feel like everything and everyone in the world are sitting in my sunshiney corner (which hello, we live in LA now, they basically are!) I feel so much lately and it feels so vulnerable. Does anyone in the world like to feel vulnerable because it's basically the last on my favorite feelings list? I want control of just about everything in my life--including my emotions. But here I am feeling ALL the same (but different) feels I feel every time we move and start our lives on over again. I'm vulnerable and delicate in all the right and in all the wrong ways. It's complicated.

A few weeks ago I was making cookies on a Sunday afternoon and realized mid butter-beating that I was out of vanilla. No problem, I thought, this is just a real good excuse to meet my neighbors! So I walked out the door with high hopes of wonderful friendships-to-be in our building, but was quickly crushed as I knocked and knocked and knocked again only to find mostly vacant apartments, a college kid with nothing in his kitchen but ketchup and an older man who said they were fresh out of vanilla. It sounds silly to say now, but as the last door closed I could feel my eyes welling up with tears and before long I was heavy-breath sobbing down the hall back home. I thought of our German friends across the hall in New York, our wonderful Super and his family next door, my dear Vera just one floor down and all I could think was, They would have vanilla! All of them! That place is the best and this place is horrible and I'll never have friends in my building again! I don't claim to be rational in this moment or ever but ya'll know I'm always honest, and those were the true feelings of my delicate heart. But then--wait! A door opened. The old gentleman was back with his sweet wife in tow, calling out for me to stop! come back! he was wrong! they had vanilla! And just like that, poof! My heart was beating and my smile was beaming and I felt like I should skip back to their door singing my joy about how great they were, how great this place was and how much I loved everything. Which I kind of did before talking the nice lady's ear off, taking her vanilla and returning home exhausted from all the feels and determined to write this alllll out sometime soon.

Which I'm finally doing now, for no other reason than for memory's sake. Because being sad, being lonely, feeling vulnerable and complicated and a little lost are normal emotions when you're starting over and I don't ever want these times to be forgotten in the grandeur of our city life adventures. There is so much good in our life, heck, there's a whole lot of fantastic, amazing and great, but the inter-weavings of good and not-so-good are what make up a beautiful life, and when I read these keepin' it real blog posts and more importantly when my kids read these blog posts in years to come I hope they realize that being sad is ok, being lonely is ok, feeling vulnerable and complicated and lost are ok because we've all been there and we'll all get through it. We will! I feel like I should say I have a testimony of this, amen! Because seriously, I do. So I'm completely confident that someday soon my heart will be a little more stable than it's present state, but until then you'll find me with tissues in hand, chocolate close by, an endless loop of conversation with my best friend Netflix and a Costco-sized vat of vanilla in the cupboard--'cause I can't handle going door to door again just yet!