The Move To California

• 

Pictures can be deceiving. Social media can be deceiving. It can be so easy to get wrapped up and sucked into what everyone else is posting. People are always judging their entire lives and own happiness against the brief moments and pictures on someone else’s social media feed. In all reality, is a web of lies; Seriously. If you want your life to be full of rainbows, then you have to deal with the storms that come first.

By all of the pictures and social media posts, it would seem like our move to California in June was exciting and adventurous. The reality of the situation is that I spent the first night in our new apartment curled up on the floor in the fetal position sobbing my eyes out. Let’s start from the beginning…

By the time we left Michigan, emotions were already at an all-time high. It took us three days with the pup in the car to drive across the country to make it to California. The drive was long but still exciting as we moved through each state, sharing fun facts and admiring the countryside.

After three days in the car, we had finally arrived in California. We settled into our hotel room for the night with the pup and ordered some pizza to relax before Ron’s first day of work. That is the first night that the waterworks were on full blast. For some reason, reality hit me in the gut that we were now in California, and this would be our new home. WHAT THE HELL DID WE DO?! I was just sitting on the bed, crying on and off uncontrollably, and eating pizza. Thinking about it now, the scenario probably closely resembled a stereotypical movie scene where you see a woman eating ice cream and crying uncontrollably over a break up. Except for me, my break up was with Michigan and our home we had known for the past 5 years. I was a hot mess.

The next morning Ron took off around 6 am, and Meeka and I hung out in the hotel room until we received the phone call to pick up our keys for our new apartment. I was sad that Ron couldn’t be with us to actually see our apartment for the first time, but I knew that starting his job was more important. I was ready and excited to step foot into our new home, but Meeka did not feel the same way.

Understandably, she had just spent three days in a car moving across the country, and now her dad was gone, and mom was trying to take her to a new place. She was terrified. I could not get her into the apartment door. I spent about an hour with her walking around outside until she finally just laid down in front of the garage and refused to move.

I was patient and just sat with her outside on the ground, petting her and trying to reassure her that I was not leaving. Finally, I was able to get her into the garage and get the door closed- success! But from there, she decided to make the car her new home, and she curled up in the backseat of the car without moving. I left the door to the apartment open and slowly started moving things in and then sitting down and petting her until she finally decided that she was ready to come inside. That was enough of a mental and emotional crisis on its own! But, I just tried to suck it up and realize that I’m sure she was scared and nervous because we were in a brand new place.

I finished unloading the few things we had in the car and setting up what I could to make an empty apartment feel like home. Later that night, I called the PODS company to get an update on our POD location, and when we could get it delivered. We were originally told it would take about a week and a half to two weeks to get our belongings, so we were expecting to get everything by the end of the week, if not the beginning of next week. We were fully prepared to sleep on the floor and just hang out while waiting for our belongings. But when I called the company, I was informed that we wouldn’t have our stuff delivered to us for another two weeks—long story short, for some reason, that just broke me.

The thought of moving to a new city and a new state all the way across the county and having to live in an empty apartment for two weeks sleeping on the floor, was more than I could take at the moment. The sheer fact that we had just left our first house that we had built into a home together and that now we were 2500 miles away from friends and family really hit home…this is the part where I was curled up on the floor sobbing. I feel like I cried for hours. When my husband got home, he hugged me and consoled me, but I felt defeated with all the small hurdles I jumped throughout the day. I knew that tomorrow was a new day, and I just had to make it through the first night.

Sure enough, I woke up the next day, and things were a little better. I was still anxious and scared, but I was a step further than the day before. I sucked it up and went to Home Depot to buy 2 camping chairs so that Ron and I would at least have somewhere to sit before our furniture arrived.

I didn’t want to leave Meeka in the apartment by herself since there was no furniture, and I didn’t want her to feel like I was abandoning her, so that threw another wrench in things. I basically could not leave the house for two weeks unless she went with me. That left my daily errand choices to either walking and hiking or Home Depot and Pet Smart.

The first two weeks in California were hard, but each day got just a little better. No one really tells you these things when you make a big move. You only see the exciting pictures and fun stories on social media. In all reality, it is challenging and emotionally draining. The mental idea that I was so far away from family and friends was the most challenging hurdle to get over, and it still affects me on some days.

Now that it has been about three months in California, we are getting more use to things and exploring the different cities and hiking trails around us. For now, we are grounded in Cali, but we have a whole new state to explore.

The moral of the story is that you can’t always believe what you see on social media. Everyone struggles, but no one really shares those struggles. With more social isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health is at an all-time low. It is okay to struggle and not be okay, and we need to start normalizing that in our society. So check on yourself, check on your friends, and don’t be afraid to be vulnerable.