Living In The In-Between
I am struggling to live in the in-between right now. It seems like the worst time of year for this transition to be happening. We move to Georgia no later than January 20th. We are in the process of selling our house and buying a new one. My husband is out-processing while trying to stay current and being told he’s a low priority.
I think that perfectly encapsulates how we’re both feeling right now. We want to keep trying and showing up because this is the one life that we get. But we are both ready for these two months to pass so we can start the next chapter. And yet, it’s also the holiday season, so it is time to celebrate, but this year looks very different from every other.
I am open to all advice! This season is hard, and this PCS feels incredibly different than the last one for several reasons. First, we had only been married for two months the last time we PCSd, and he was gone for a month of that. The apartment in Florida never really felt like home. I never really unpacked. And I really didn’t have any connections or friends in Florida that I needed to say goodbye to. It felt like moving into his place versus ours, and I spent half of that time back at my parent’s house because there was no reason to stay in Florida while he was at SERE.
We have way more stuff this time because I am a collector of everything, and we’ve had a baby, which brings a lot of stuff. It’s hard to say goodbye to this house. It’s the first one we bought and lived in. It’s where I survived our first deployment. It’s where we brought our son home. Friendships have been created and grown through this house. It has so many memories in it.
And, yet, right now, it doesn’t feel like our house. We had to move a bunch of stuff out to get it ready for photos and showings, so it feels pretty empty compared to how it usually looks. We have to stay on top of keeping it straight and clean, which is nice, but it also makes it feel like we can’t live in our house. We were really hoping to sell while we were in Ireland so that we wouldn’t have to live in this balance. It is tough to get a house ready for a showing and watch a one-year-old at the same time.
We are coming up on my favorite time of year. I love decorating for Christmas and Hanukkah. I go way over the top, and it looks like the holidays threw up joy everywhere. I always decorate the day after Thanksgiving, and for the past three years, we’ve gotten a Christmas tree imported from North Carolina from a local family farm. I can’t decorate this year, though. I need to keep the house neutral for showings, and even after we get an offer taking it off the market, I have to be ready for the packers.
We always, and by always, I mean this will be the second time, do a partial DITY (I know it’s called a PPM now, but I think that acronym is worse, so I’m sticking with the old one, at least for now). They’ll call this week to give us an exact date, but it’ll be sometime between November 30th and December 9th. And they need to take all of my Christmas decorations because it’s way too much for us to drive ourselves. And we probably won’t even be in our house for Christmas. I would be pretty surprised if our house was still on the market by then, and I think any buyer in the next two weeks will probably push to be in the house by Christmas.
It’s a weird time of year to be leaving. Most of our friends already have plans for the holidays, which makes it hard to plan a goodbye party. And I can’t host anything, which I love to do, because we need to keep the house ready for showings. It’s a big ole circle where one thing directly affects the other and back again, leaving me feeling pretty weird about this time.
Thankfully, I found our house in Georgia, but the problem is, it felt like home, which is great and makes it hard not to be there. I can picture our life there more fully now. Knowing where we live means I can figure out the trips we want to take and the places we want to visit. I can figure out the little things like what grocery store and Target I will go to. I can look for preschools to see if we need to get on the waitlist now since I know some of those can take a long time to get into. I can look for places to worship and areas where we’ll find community.
And I want to decorate this house. I want to figure out where everything goes. I want to start writing on the walls. It’s bigger, so we have two extra rooms that I get to figure out what to put in them. I want to pick out the blinds and any new furniture we need. The living/dining room layout is different than what I’m used to, so I want to play around with design. It’s going to be a fun and exciting project, but I can’t really do anything right now.
Living in this limbo is really hard, and the time of year is making it harder for me. This is really my first PCS. The first one only sort of counts since I didn’t call Florida home in the first place. This one is hard. We are saying goodbye to a home. We are saying goodbye to friends. And since they are divesting my husband’s platform, almost all of our friends are in the same PCS boat, which has made connecting harder as we all prepare to say goodbye. It feels like I’m in the moments before a deployment where we want them to hurry up and leave so they can hurry up and get back home. So, how do I live in limbo? How do I thrive and enjoy life without wishing for the next adventure to hurry up? What does getting the most out of this season look like? I’d love to hear your thoughts!