Internally Displaced
I wish there was a book titled “This is What it is to Lose Your Home.” I wish I had some sort of guide, something to hang on to, some checklist to follow — “10 Easy Steps to a Better Life.”
After we signed the closing documents on the house, we drove back over. We walked through each empty room, sharing stories and thanking the space. Each of us imagining the ghosts of our former selves living the life that took place in that space.
I remembered the day we bought the house. We brought in a picnic dinner and ate on the dining room floor. The restaurant had not given us enough forks, so we did the best we could, eating sloppily with our fingers. Have you ever eatten a salad with your fingers? I have.
We remembered birthday parties and cozy reading days and time spent working to make the world better and moments and hours spent building legos. We remembered holiday celebrations and board games. We remembered meals cooked and friends jumping into the pool. And I could see them — each moment playing out in front of me.
This is not the first time we have moved. Before that house we’d moved often, rental to rental as life and our family grew. But that was different — we chose it. We were leaving each spot for something better. This time we didn’t want to give up what we had. We didn’t want to leave our schools, our neighbors. We didn’t want to leave our home.
But we packed up the PODS and raced to clean the house, and piled entirely too much stuff into the car and drove away into the unknown. We said thank you and goodbye while everything within us raged and broke.
We said goodbye to the church and community we have loved, have poured ourselves into, and we became unemployed and homeless.
I told friends over and over that I want to be paranoid. I want our fleeing to be ridiculous — something unnecessary. And every day I hear of someone else doing the same. So many friends and strangers packing up and leaving home behind. This is not what I ever imagined being internally displaced to look like — life appearing normal: final meals with friends, kids jumping in bouncy houses, counting fish in a pond. But here we are, crafting our own narrative, finding our own way forward.