On moving, home, and changing shape.

A couple of days ago, I created a countdown on my long-forgotten countdown app, to help me conceptualize the number of days until I fly to Lexington. This is important, because I need to do a lot of things before that day, which is only a couple of weeks away. Those things mostly include packing. Not packing my suitcase, but packing my apartment.

In the past two and a half years, I have packed up my life of 32 years (at the time) and moved (along with my family) to a new house across town. I have packed my Durham, NC apartment and moved to Lexington, KY. I have packed two large suitcases and lived in England for two and a half weeks. I have packed and moved to Charlottesville, VA. And now, I am about to pack up and leave Charlottesville.

(my view from the school parking lot, Charlottesville)

Four months ago, I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, hoping that “things” might “work out”. It seemed sensible. I have always done what I thought I should. I like to do the “right” thing. Surely if you do the “right” thing the universe will “reward” you. (so says religious trauma) It was an incredibly difficult decision, but it boiled down to being offered a job, so I took it.

Still, after the past couple of years, it almost wasn’t surprising when six weeks in to giving every last atom of physical and emotional energy I had to this new school, new coworkers, new children… on October 1st, I was let go, with zero reason or warning.

It almost wasn’t surprising. Yet it was. Because it was six weeks of “your classroom looks amazing”, “please know how much better things already are in here”, “the children are already getting so many more lessons”, “you’ve got this”, "even if you don't see your progress, we do", “we are so grateful to have you here”… oh and by the way, you’re fired.

(sunset from near my apartment, Charlottesville)

October was a month of deep fatigue. I cocooned in a haze of disbelief and unbelievable physical weakness. For weeks, I would get up, wash my face, brush my teeth, make breakfast, and then collapse back in bed as if I’d been working for hours. For the first two weeks, I could not catch my breath. It felt like someone was sitting on my chest.

As I lay watching the sky out the window, I felt defeated, but I didn't stop thinking and planning. I wondered what to do next. I knew that I could probably hop onto the job site and apply to another school. But to tell the truth, I have been burnt out of teaching for some time. And adding the politics of what seems like every Montessori school I have ever had the displeasure of being associated with has turned me off of schools indefinitely.

From my horizontal position, pressed for both breath and ideas, I would google for jobs in Charlottesville. I applied for things I knew I wasn’t qualified for but thought I’d try anyway. I read job and industry descriptions, lists of further education and needed qualifications for various random jobs I could think of, listened to podcasts, watched youtubers wax poetic on their careers of choice, and asked friends and family to tell me what their current jobs entailed. I picked up the little yellow person from the corner of my proverbial career map, and dropped them over and over again into different scenarios, watched the landscape of my imagination spin as I landed in front of idea after idea. After weeks of this, I felt as lost as ever.

And so, after much mulling it over (an understatement) with much help (another understatement) from my family, I have decided to move back to Durham. It is what I have been trying to do since I moved away a year and a half ago.

For the first few years of living there, I thought Durham was fine, but home, and comfort, was Lexington. But Durham slowly, insidiously, became a home. This warrants its own post, so for now, all I will say is that I remember the day I noticed it consciously: the day I flew home for spring break in 2023. Coming to Lexington felt strange. Like it should be home, but it was foreign.

(Eno River, Durham 2020)

It broke my heart, this rift from Lexington, the place I thought would always have a perfectly Shannon-shaped hole to tuck myself cozily into whenever I needed a soul-rest. For thirty-two years, it did just that. But I think what happened in Durham, and likely would have happened anywhere but I’ll never know for sure, is that I changed shape. Shannon-shape was no longer the thing it always had been. And that is bittersweet, incomprehensible, and beautiful.

It’s not that old Shannon-shape was “worse”. It’s not that new Shannon-shape is “better”. They just aren’t the same. I’m not talking about the normal growth and maturity we go through as we grow and change.

It reminds me of the little washcloths you can buy as shrink-wrapped nuggets, but once you run them under the tap, they expand and become something entirely new. I use that analogy carefully, because I don’t want to equate old Shannon-shape with anything lesser-than, smaller, etc. It’s just that once you are changed, even if you want to, you cannot arrange yourself back into your old shape.

(Ashland Henry Clay Estate, Lexington, KY; 2006)

I see my next few steps ahead of me, and that's as far ahead as I need to see for now, but I’m not without trepidation. What if I’ve made the wrong choice? What if I let my family down? What if I let my self down? What if it doesn’t work out? What if Durham stops feeling Shannon-shaped?

I guess I will hope that there will be another place, another life, new and yet unknown, that will become the right shape, if necessary.

I recently did a meditation where the guide said of life “it’s just a brief time”. That gave me feelings in my heart. I will admit that I have wished so often that my particular life story would end. I have wished for that, but also fought against that wish and accompanying entropy. I get up. I eat the food. I go for the walk. I do the journaling, the yoga, the meditation. I do the gratitude practice, the glimmer search, the job search. I do everything “right” according to every “expert”. I like feeling like, if I can’t figure out how to be successful in a way that society recognizes, then at least I can be stalwart and brave. Perhaps this is naive, but sometimes I feel if I work hard enough, I can somehow steer myself towards a life I have not yet envisioned, but am working hard to believe exists.

I have thought, more than once, that I have found that life. It has never felt like an end point, but rather, an arrival. Once, I thought it was the sound of the windchimes and the bamboo swaying in the breeze while I sat on the porch swing. Once, I thought it was the palm trees and tides of California. Once, I thought it was in the arms of someone who knew the names of every bit of North Carolina flora and fauna we encountered on our hikes.

I wonder how many vastly different Shannon-shapes I will find in my life. I enjoy them, but I am longing for one that will let me rest. I feel quite deeply weary in a way that I know is not irreversible. I just need a place to land.

So I am going to Durham. I am going to try. Which is the only thing there is to do. I am going to try to find a job that is sustainable. I am going to get my favorite cappuccino from my favorite café and drive to my favorite garden and walk down the gravel path I have walked so, so many times before, between the dormant cherry blossom trees, for it will be January. I am going to dance up the wooden stairs of my favorite studio, have late night drinks with writer friends, and watch for the wisteria in spring. I am going to try to find many things, and along the way, I am going to try to exhale, and enjoy, because, it’s just a brief time.

(Monticello Trails, Charlottesville)