On Moving

Alright. So, you know that feeling when you travel somewhere, perhaps to a different country, and it feels like you've been transplanted to another world? Nothing...NO-TH-ING makes sense. The words you are surrounded by and the customs of the people are completely foreign. Complex.

Maybe you bought a map and the travel guide for that particular place. You have done your research, found the best ways to interact with the townspeople, even marked the highest priorities on your sight seeing list.

Then, maybe your flight was delayed. And, when you arrived it was raining. But, you didn't pack an umbrella. You have no idea how to say 'umbrella' in the native tongue, so you keep walking around from store to store playing a game of charades with the clerks who look at you like you have five monkeys dancing on top of your head. They have absolutely no idea what you're asking for. You have no idea how to speak the words they might recognize. Defeated, you walk to your hotel in the downpour. You collapse in a heap on your bed, ready for tomorrow to bring a fresh start.

But, it does not. Your entire vacation continues on this trajectory for about three months. You awkwardly walk about stumbling through every day trying to communicate with the people around you with no avail. Everything. Every single moment is...hard. At every turn, you have to learn something that you knew on your own previous 'planet.'

This, my friends, has been my experience with moving every few years for a majority of my life. As a child and for the past eleven years as a military spouse. We have lived in five states, six homes, added a sweet son and said goodbye to our sweet fur-baby along the way. I have shared countless hours with nine primary care doctors, probably over thirty specialists, seven dentists. (Ahem: confession: I have had one too many bad experiences with new dentists that I'm over two years in our current location without having a dental exam. I'm taking the baby steps to get there though.)

Now, consider the places you go each and every week: church, the grocery store, school, restaurants, the dry cleaner. What happens if they've changed the layout of your favorite grocery store? You walk around lost for a few weeks, muttering to yourself as you hunt for your necessities. What about the local barista that knows your name and your favorite drink and has it ready for you when you get to the front of the line? Are you 'Norm' at the watering hole down the street...does everyone there know your name?

What happens when all of these things change all at once? Universes collide. Moving is one of the most stressful things that a person can endure in their life; if I recall correctly from my Intro to Psych classes it's in the Top Three. And, that's for the neurotypicals. What about for those on the spectrum who need their lives to be orderly and make sense just for the wheels to keep from falling off?

For me? It looks like regression: I struggle to not hermit myself inside the safety of home, clinging to the very things that I have moved into this foreign home. I walk around with earbuds in my ears at probably ten grocery stores until I find ONE that will work. Then, I have to deliberate between which one was the LEAST offending. And then, at what time to shop there. Then...it keeps on going. The process to choose a grocery store feels insurmountable. And just like that, I draw inward. I pull myself into a cozy little cocoon before I feel myself slip too far away.

Someone once told me that I chose this life. I chose to marry a man whose life included regular moving. Yes, I did choose to marry him- my best friend and the man that challenged me and encourages me to be a better Sara, each and every day. What I did not choose was to find out that my first giant move away from my hometown as an adult sucked the life out of me. Like sucker punched me right after getting married, buying a house and moving- I had the stress hat trick!

But here's the thing; I did not choose for my brain to be designed in such a way that would feel like the world around me was foreign and crumbling. For the longest time, I analyzed and prayed and attempted to "fix" myself from all of this.

This last move, two years ago, I felt the collision. But this time, with the increased knowledge I had gained with my diagnosis, I was able to know why this was happening. I wasn't able to stop it from down pouring for what felt like three months (this is figurative!) but I was better equipped to communicate what I was feeling, what I might need and what types of things I could do to keep myself from going full-on cocoon.

And yet, as I consider the very words I just wrote, I had the vision of a beautiful butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. Maybe this is what this very process of moving has been giving me. Because had I not had so many difficult times before, how would I know that I made progress on the most recent challenge?