Some of my biggest failings as a human include a predisposition toward extreme ambivalence, a tendency to catastrophize, a habit of worrying that a good thing happening means an equally bad thing will follow to balance out the universe, and a pattern of endlessly overthinking a decision once it’s already been made. All of these tendencies are rallying together right now, as we prepare to sell our current house and move into the new home we just purchased. I am a wreck of nerves and anxieties. I have not had a solid night of sleep in… three weeks??? (Hello, 3:00 am my old friend.) (WHY IS IT ALWAYS 3:00 AM?!?)
Let’s see if the old “get it out of your brain and onto the page” trick works today.
I am worried that:
- we will move in and end up hating the new house for unforeseen reasons.
- my eye will never stop twitching and I will never have a full night’s sleep again.
- we will never sell our current house, will be stuck paying two mortgages until all our savings drains away, and then be forced to sell our new house at a loss.
- our realtor will tell us the ONLY WAY to sell our house is if we move the majority of our belongings into storage and we have to do that and then move those things into the new house. (My husband and I did a double move when we moved into our first apartment together prior to me starting grad school. IT WAS AWFUL.)
- I will not be able to find a handyman to do the work I want to do on our house and will have to do it myself (which I am WILLING to do, it will just be subpar work).
- none of our furniture will look good in the new house and we will have to spend gajillions of dollars on new furniture.
- encouraging my daughter to donate/give up [beloved baby toy] will ruin her life and she will hate me forever because of it.
- we will all hate the commute and feel like we are in the car all the time and it will ruin our lives. (The new house is QUADRUPLE our current commute to both school and work [although this is because our current commute is six minutes].)
- Carla will be consumed with grief over leaving our neighbors and their dogs and will never forgive us for doing this to her.
- I will (continue to) be so consumed by The New House that I will (continue to) ignore the work of my heart, which is my writing, and ruin my life and future prospects as a mediocre writer.
- we will end up hating the flooring we have chosen (and ordered) and cannot reverse without significant financial burden.
- dander from the sellers’ pets will have seeped into the walls of the new house and I will be Extremely Allergic for all of my days.
- my mother-in-law’s prediction of “there will be mice!” will come to fruition.
- some horrific calamity will befall us because we have been too fortunate in all other areas of our lives.
- there won’t be enough wall space for all the bookcases we want/need.
- we will end up hating our new neighbors.
- the new house will have some hidden deficit that the inspection didn’t find, and it will be costly and burdensome to ameliorate.
- (relatedly) our air conditioner will decide that now is the ideal time to die.
- the primary bedroom, which is most definitely MUCH smaller than our current capacious bedroom, will feel TOO SMALL and I will hate it.
- I will fail to transform into the casual entertainer that the new house kind of demands I become and waste our fabulous outdoor space.
- prospective buyers who come to look at our house will TOUCH my STUFF with their HANDS and other BODY PARTS.
- my failure to be purely excited about a circumstance that is objectively exciting indicates something awful and irredeemable about my personality.
Part of me believes (hopes) that this is a normal response to making a big, life-changing decision. Moving is a big deal, and so I am expending a lot of mental energy thinking about it. I hope, with time, I feel better about all these things.
The last time you made a major decision, did you have similar anxieties? What was the biggest thing you worried about that turned out to be a non-issue? Were any of your concerns realized?
