Inbetweenerville - just past the desert of No Man's Land, and just before the land of the 6%. We're in between four months and a year quit, approximately. We've weathered lots of storms and faced down some firsts without smoking! This has been so encouraging and ennobling that we of course keep going. And it's lovely here, but the village has its own perils. It has twists and turns, dead ends and charming paths that nowhere, shops with things we need and shops with things we should avoid. There's no map, so it's up to us to navigate through by trial and error.
As an update to my own life in the village, I can only say I am exhausted. I'm still not settled, physically or emotionally. I go back and forth, hauling my stuff (in the real world as I move to an apartment), but put off a final move-in date that would actually involve my bed and TVs and things. Because that would mean leaving the "old me" completely behind.
There is comfort in familiarity. The temptation is to go back to what's known because it's easier than forging a new path. "Why can't I stay here after all? It's not so bad, really. Can't I just find new ways to deal with old problems?" Like what, exactly? Suddenly all those reasons to change fly out the window because it's frightening.
I am also comforted by familiarity. Living in this house feels like Jim is still taking care of me. I'm scared. It's not that I've never been alone; I have. But I was so much younger then. And I hadn't had the experience of Jim in my life yet. Sure, I'll take him with me in a way. But it won't be the same. The new, non-smoking me who will live permanently in this village will be an entirely new person, in an entirely new environment.
Change is scary. I need to find an anchor in this new place.
