I lived in a house in California until I was 5.  Then I lived in another until I was 18.  Then I spent the summer with my long-distance boyfriend in Georgia before starting my freshman year of college in Ohio.  I remember, upon arriving in Ohio, sitting down in front of a computer to lament on my Livejournal (a blog before blogs were a thing) that nowhere felt like home.  California was left behind.  Many of my valued people were in Georgia.  And all my stuff was in Ohio.  I remember pontificating on what I probably believed at the time were very deep thoughts about the nature and meaning of home, and how it was all three places, but simultaneously none of them.

Fastforward ten years, and at least as many living spaces.  In my four years of college, I lived in ten different places – three dorm rooms (first in Ohio, then in Georgia) and seven apartments with my then-boyfriend who was from a military family and had therefore never learned the benefits of housing stability.  Then I moved back in with my parents during graduate school, went to a “starter apartment” in Boston, and a year later moved to a wonderful apartment in the quasi-suburbs.

The last of these apartments was incredible, and I was certain I would live there until I was ready to buy a house.  But then my partner and I received an unwelcome visit from our until-that-moment-wonderful landlord, who informed us that he had sold the building where we lived, and we had one month to find another home.

Why am I recounting such a personal story on a blog that is supposed to be about therapy issues?  Because this entire incident has me thinking a great deal about displacement, moving, and the associated stressors.  The moment we were told we had to move, I immediately felt homeless and unstable.  I had been floating comfortably among the top three layers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (image below, more of an explanation behind the link) and now I was knocked down to level 1, wondering where I would sleep!

Then I went through a grief process, akin to the stages developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.  First I felt denial.  “Absolutely not!” I declared.  “We are staying right here.  We are not going anywhere.  I will magically stumble upon enough money to outbid the buyers and we will buy this house and we are going to keep living in this apartment!”  Then anger: “I hate the landlord!  I hate the buyers!  I hate the construction workers!  I will scream hateful words at them all!”  Next, bargaining: “I’d be willing to pack all our stuff, put it outside, then move it back in and set it up.  But I’m not moving to another place.”  Then depression, where I became rather quiet and negative.  Finally, reluctant acceptance: “Ok, let’s start looking for another place…”

(It’s worth noting that grief can actually be much more complicated and individualized than the Kubler-Ross model, but in this case, it wasn’t.)

So we found another apartment, and it’s big, and it’s quirky, and it has most of what we were looking for, and it’s within our budget.  So that was good – we packed and moved all of our belongings, and we’ve been here for about a week.  But I still drive on autopilot to the old place.  When I’m at work, picturing myself relaxing at the end of the day, I picture my old living room or kitchen.  I’m sure it will feel like I live here eventually, but in the meantime, I’m just trying to navigate the psychology of moving and the instability and upheaval it brings, and to figure out how long it will take for it to feel like I live here.

I’m curious about other people’s experiences… if you don’t mind, I’d love to hear your stories about moving to a new apartment and how long it took for them to feel like home.  Please leave them in comments below.