I realised the reason that I was having so much trouble figuring out where I was going to live was because my thinking was wrong, and it was because I was in denial. I was not willing to accept what had happened. I wanted to keep my old life, I wanted to keep living in my old house. I was not willing to acknowledge that this was reality and I would have to find a new normal in it. It took me a long time, but eventually I realised what I needed to do. I needed to let go of my old life, of the past and to let it go, because it wasn’t going to come back. I would have to create a new life, I would have to start again. The fact that my husband and I were happy and did love each other wouldn’t change, but my priorities would, and I would need to modify the way I looked at things. I had one of the worst evenings at the start of this month and it was when I really began to realise that the future wasn’t going to be like my past. I ended up spending three hours in the woods behind my house looking for an owl that was sitting in a tree, with its eyes staring at me and a noise coming out of my head that I kept telling myself would stop if I just left. I found the owl and I found it in time before it flew away, but I was so angry and frightened and it had taken me three hours to go through with this search. As I walked back to my car, with my friend behind me, I couldn’t help but think, “I should have given up a long time ago and started looking to make a life for myself.” That last weekend before I moved out, it was raining all weekend and I spent much of my time inside. I was staying in what I called ‘my room’. This room had been my favourite room in my old house and it was filled with objects that were special to me, from letters I had written over the years, photographs of my family, art projects, and various objects that had been meaningful to me. It was one of the first rooms I moved into when I arrived at my husband’s house but I decided I would leave the room exactly as it was. But I had so much stuff in it, and I kept finding myself filling it with more and more. There was so much that it was taking over the room and I needed to get it out of there. It wasn’t just having an effect on me, but also on my husband. He kept asking me to clear it out, and he got frustrated at me because I was putting it in the room where he was working. I thought about the last time I’d been in the room, when I did the clearing out, and realised that I had not cried. But this time I couldn’t help crying. It hit me that although I was happy, and I was moving on, it was going to be very difficult to do so without all the things I had kept in the room. I started to imagine moving to a new place where I’d be in a smaller apartment, maybe with a young family and the bedroom would be on the small side and I’d want to fill it with memories. I was still trying to figure out how to pack up all the things that I had kept in the room, and I was beginning to panic at the idea that I might not be able to come up with all the things I would need to put into storage. It was difficult for me, knowing that I would have to leave my old life behind, but it was making it hard for me to actually do it. Before I left for the final time, I began to go through all the things in my room, once again. This time I saw myself going through it when I was finished packing everything up and taking it all to storage. I had a long time to figure out what I was going to bring, and I felt terrible, remembering that it was all still in the house. At the time I was trying to be as optimistic as possible, and thinking that all my belongings would be found, and that I would be able to pick up where I’d left off. But it was still so difficult knowing that it was all gone. It was like everything I owned was being sold off with everything else we were bringing into storage. I remembered that, when I’d first moved in with my husband, all my old things were still in the house. I thought that some of those objects had probably been thrown out, but it made me remember that all my things were just sitting in the house and it felt like they were being left behind too. Even when we had moved to the smaller place in town, after my ex-husband had left, we had still had so much stuff and I still went through it all and had given most of it away, but this time I was beginning to think that it was too much. I spent a long time looking at things that I wanted to take with me to my new place, and I put everything else into storage. It was hard knowing that it was all being dumped and was no longer serving any purpose, but I was able to feel very lucky to be moving into a home where I had a room that was already so special to me. It was a room I had loved in my old house, but it was perfect in its simplicity. There was nothing fancy, it was a beautiful room, but it didn’t have any of the things that had filled my old bedroom. I made sure that I had everything I wanted. My mother’s painting, the bookcases and the table on the windowsill, the small picture above the bed and the rocking chair all came with me, and so did some other objects, like the blanket my ex-husband had bought me before we were married. I didn’t regret that I was leaving the room the way it was. I felt like that was my special place, but it had become too big and was causing me too much stress. It felt strange to leave the room like that, but it felt right that I should clear it out first and try to deal with all the things I had collected, the things I had kept, when they were still fresh in my mind. I think that’s something that everyone in recovery should do. Take everything out of your space and take everything down from the walls, but it’s also important to clear everything away for a time and be ready to accept that all your past is over and you are starting a new life. I left my old life behind, and I kept on thinking of what would happen when I went into the new one. What was there? I thought of how my life was going to be different in many ways, and I did want things to be different. Even though I was happy to be moving on, it wasn’t just that simple. I could not make it work just yet, and there were many things I needed to get right before I could begin to get used to the way things were going to be from then on. That night I began to feel very lost and overwhelmed. There was so much change and upheaval that had happened in such a short space of time. I couldn’t help but think of all the time that was still to come and I kept asking myself, “What am I doing? Am I really ready to leave? Where will I be living?” It was going to be such a big move, and I was a little scared of what life would look like once I’d moved into the place I was living. I was a little scared that if I wanted to see my friends, we would have to do it on Skype or WhatsApp, which is something I’ve never felt very comfortable doing. It was difficult, too, to think of leaving the town I’d spent my whole life in and moving to a city I had never even visited. I couldn’t help but think that leaving would be difficult. By the end of the day, I was feeling really down. It was a miserable, grey night and I didn’t feel like myself. The idea of leaving the place I knew for the place I had no idea where I was going didn’t feel right, but then I thought of how difficult the past year had been and I wanted to get on with my life. I decided to put my worries to one side for now and just get on with my evening. It felt like the old me was back for that evening. I was in the space for a long time, which was unusual for me because most nights, and most days really, I am always in a rush, going from one thing to the next. There were only a few boxes left to pack and I was able to get them finished in just over two hours, and when I got home it was nine o’clock. I didn’t stay up for long, because I was quite exhausted and wanted to go to bed as soon as I got home. It was dark outside when I went to bed and I was thankful for that. The fact that it was almost midnight meant that I would be able to leave at six the next morning and get everything ready for my move. I was able to keep on track and get everything done in a short space of time. As I was lying in bed, I started thinking about my new place, and I realised that I had thought of it as being a temporary space and I hadn’t planned much for the future. I started thinking about what had happened in the time that had passed since my last post on this site. It had been more than a year. And