from moving 13 times in 12 years to over 2.5 years in the same house!

Mark and I have been in our house for two years and eight months. I just realized that this actually a great milestone for me, very much worth celebrating.

For someone who never moved from birth until I started college, my 20s were an absolute whirlwind of moving. For over a decade, I never lived anywhere for more than two years:

• spring 2012: we moved out of our house in Berkley. My permanent address on my ID became my dad's house, though I never actually lived there. Most of my "I don't actually need this but I don't have the time to sort through it" stuff went to his house due to how quickly our old house sold.
• May 2012: I moved out of the dorms and into my boyfriend-at-the-time's apartment
• July 2012: moved out of his apartment when his lease ended, in to my sister's house
• August 2012: moved in to my own apartment (which was in the same complex as the bf's - yeah, I was annoyed I couldn't just get an earlier move-in date but this place was super student-oriented, so leases started in August)
• July 2013: moved to the townhouse in Maryland
• May (or June?) 2015: moved to the apartment in Maryland

This is where it gets spicy.....

• April 2017: moved to the apartment in Virginia
• 3 weeks later: moved in to my friend's ex husband's house in Maryland because the then-bf and I broke up and I didn't feel safe staying in our apartment, even though he moved out too. (long story short, he was an ass & so was his family and I didn't want the majority of my stuff to be somewhere they had access to while I was at work.)
• June 2017: moved in with my aunt and uncle, back up in Michigan
• 2019-20: kinda-sorta slowly moved in with Mark, spending less time at my aunt & uncle's but keeping *most* of my stuff at their house, save for 1-2 loads of laundry at a time, toiletries, and a small selection of crochet projects
• August 2020: moved in to the south Canton condo
• June 2021: moved in to the Farmington condo
• June 2023: moved in to our house

I moved 13 times in 12 years, or 12 times if you don't count the partially-moving-in-to-Mark's-place. It was EXHAUSTING. I never felt settled, never felt comfortable unpacking everything because I probably wouldn't be in any one place for too long anyway. And for the most part, I never really felt like anywhere was "my home," a potential for a forever place.

The exceptions were the apartment in Maryland - god I loved that place. The space, the management, the price compared to the surrounding area, the neighborhood were all lovely. We only moved out because then-bf got a job in Virginia and didn't want to make that commute (fair, considering DC traffic). And though I knew living with my aunt and uncle was temporary and it was never meant to be "my home," I at least felt comfortable there, because I was living with family, and I felt safe being there after the traumatic breakup I'd been through. Of course, I've felt safe everywhere I've lived with Mark - but considering that all 3 landlords declined to renew our leases because they wanted to sell the places, it was also hard to feel settled.

The one benefit to all of this moving around was that I started to connect with my Things a LOT less. Every time I moved, I was motivated to purge because it meant at least 1 less box to move. Haven't seen something since the last time I moved? That's ok, it can't have meant that much to me if I don't remember where I packed it and haven't needed it since I moved in. Misplaced something I know I didn't lose in a move? Eh, it'll probably turn up next time I move.

We've now been in our house for just over two and a half years and it feels SO GOOD to be settled. More than just knowing that if I decorate, I won't have to take it all down in 6-18 months, we OWN the place so we get to make it our own! Anything we want to repaint, replace, rebuild, or redecorate, we CAN. We're contributing to rebuilding our neighborhood association because we know we'll be a part of this community for a long time, and we want to get to know the people who live around us.

Happy two years and eight months to living in our house! Here's to a few more decades. I plan to stay here until neither of us can handle all the stairs anymore. 😀

Holy shit, I'm a hardcore people-pleaser.

To understand where I'm coming from in this post, I want you to first read this blog post from Let's Queer Things Up.

I..... Holy shit. This is so true it hurts a little.

Totally fits with my pattern of shitty exes. The first one left me so desperate for approval that I let the second one treat me like garbage so I could make it up to him (because he always made me feel like his anger was my fault) and then repeat the cycle. I hid so much unhappiness in both of those relationships because I wanted the people around me to think that I was happy. Confessing my unhappiness to the people who loved me would make them sad, and I didn't want to make them sad, so I kept it to myself.

Boundaries? What are those?

The summer I was 16 I kissed my boyfriend for the first time. The teenage hormones and the excitement led from gentle kisses to heavy making out. At the time, I was waiting to have sex until I was married. We played around at second base a lot, and I always enjoyed it in the moment, but I was riddled with confusion afterwards.  I knew I needed to tell him that I wasn't sure I was comfortable with it and that I definitely didn't want to go any further - to make my boundaries clear - but I was terrified. I was too young and naive to fully understand why I was afraid to talk to him - he was nowhere near abusive, and I'm sure the worst he'd have done would have been breaking up with me if he really wanted to go further - but I see now that I was fawning.  That conversation might have made him unhappy, so I simply didn't talk about it. Instead, I avoided him for the rest of the summer until my best friend finally told me that breaking up with him was the right thing to do, both for myself and for him. I'm still kind of sorry that I let it end that way.

The next time I knew that I needed to set boundaries for myself, I wasn't sure where I needed them to be, and I told him exactly that.  Simply saying "I need boundaries but I don't know what they are right now, so please be patient with me while I figure them out" was fucking HUGE for me. But didn't give me the space I needed, and I let things happen on his terms anyway because it didn't make sense to me to stir the pot by saying "I shouldn't be texting you several times a day every day, and I'm not comfortable with you starting a conversation with 'hey sexy'" when I liked him so much.

When he asked me to be his girlfriend (via text message), I knew I was not ready to say yes. It wasn't that I wanted to date other people or "keep my options open" - I simply was not emotionally ready to be in a committed relationship. But I couldn't imagine telling him that, especially not via text message.  So I fawned and said yes. This ended up setting the stage for seven months of doing whatever it took to keep him happy.  He'd get mad at me over some bullshit, we'd fight via text message, I'd dwell on it and plan what I had to say to his face to make it okay, I'd go over there, and he'd initiate passionate sex before I could say a word.  Did I ever ask him to stop so we could talk first? Absolutely not. That would upset him. I liked the sex, and I liked him seeming so passionate, and I liked not having difficult conversations. So I let it keep happening until it broke me.

There is one difference between me and Sam Dylan Finch: I don't back away from my healthy relationships. I do tend to vent to a selection of them, as the Sam said is common among fawners.  I was venting to my best friend of over ten years when I realized that I had to break up with my then-boyfriend. My best friend burst into angry tears and shouted "Kate he doesn't treat you right." All I could do in the moment was also burst into tears, hug her, and tell her how lucky I was to have a friend like her. I have always been grateful to have her as a friend. I am eternally grateful that her reaction to whatever garbage I was telling her about made me see how right she was and decide to stop taking the garbage from him, even if it meant breaking up with him.

But there was a tiny part of me, the fawning people-pleaser, that was ashamed that I'd made her cry. She had her own struggles and her own garbage to deal with - how dare I worry her so with my problems? That's not something that I've ever dwelled on or continued to feel guilty about, but it was definitely there in the bottom of my gut and it illustrates the amount a people-pleaser will suppress in order to avoid making others unhappy.

I'm not really sure where this stems from. The original author suggests that a chaotic and/or abusive childhood often leads to fawning, but I grew up very, very far from abuse. Yes, my parents argued, and I suppose it's possible that when I told myself "I'm never going to get a divorce" I unconsciously made the decision to let myself be bendable, to make myself cave in order to keep the peace.  It'd probably take a therapist to confirm that theory or to uncover anything else that breeds fawning tendencies.

I've got a happy ending - well, not ending because I'm not dead and don't plan to be for quite some time - so a happy next chapter, if you will. I actually took time to sort myself out between romantic relationships. I got confident enough in myself that, when I dated someone who was pretty in to me but the feeling wasn't mutual, I didn't make myself believe that I owed him a relationship.  I let myself be an individual instead of a mirror, and I broke it off with him.

Shortly before that, I was hooking up with someone who I knew to be 100% wrong for me. I didn't fawn to please him, didn't tell myself that it was okay to be with a pessimist, didn't decide to settle for him just because he was there and showing a spark of interest. The second I saw that spark fade, I stopped trying to initiate anything and I let the fling flicker out into nothingness.

And now? I have an amazing boyfriend. One who has never once made me feel like I had to mold myself to meet his needs - we have always naturally been a great fit. And all those red flags for abusive relationships that I see on social media - the lists of behaviors that each of my serious exes line up with oh so well - are completely unrelatable for him. Any time I'm unnecessarily emotional (from my own internal logical perspective), rather than ignore me or tell me I'm being silly or to stop crying or any other emotionally abusive bullshit, he'll ask what I need to feel better right now. My response is usually just for him to hold me for a while, and he is perfectly happy to do so. (He's usually already holding me when he asks, and we just snuggle in and get more comfortable.)  Conflict between us is nearly nonexistent. Not because I deny my own boundaries, wants, or needs, but because most of those things align for us - or because he is willing to work with me to find a compromise when they don't.

I am going to make efforts to keep an eye out for fawning behaviors now that I have a word for them. At work, with friends, with family, and with my boyfriend, just to make sure I don't fall back into old habits.  Caving to other people and putting myself at the bottom of my list is so 2017 Kate. 2018 Kate started getting over that shit, and 2019 Kate is going to continue to work even harder at making sure 2020 Kate and beyond makes her boundaries and needs clear to others - even if those boundaries and desires aren't what the people around me might like best. 🍓💙

Freshman year of college: the time I quite almost killed myself over a final project

I've told this story to many people in the past - staying up for nearly 3 days straight to work on a final project that I'd badly procrastinated.  But due to the lack of sleep at the time, and the years that have passed since, I tend to get the details wrong when I retell the story.  Lo and behold, I wrote about it the day after it all happened!  I've decided to type it up for all to read.  Friends who are parents, please feel free to use this as educational material as your kids grow up and start thinking it's okay to pull all-nighters for school.  I've added some annotation for clarification in pink.

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30 April, 2010
Freshman year of college
Right before finals week

Oh my god.  This week was so hard.  I procrastinated my art history project WAY too much, like holy butt. [yes, it actually says holy butt.]  After TV night with Steph on Monday, I tried to stay up all night to work on the story.  I fell asleep around 4:30, woke up at 10ish. [I likely still made it to my 10:20 German class, because skipping class is bad m'kay?] Okay, that's kind of enough sleep.  Tuesday I got off work shortly after 1 (am, I worked the closing shift in the caf, so technically this was Wednesday morning) and continued working on the story.  I watched the sun rise (so pretty!) and fell asleep around 7:30 or 8... Woke up at 10:30.  Got breakfast at Hubbard and decided to have some coffee. with lots of cream & sugar.  Went to IAH (my afternoon class), then to CVS for some Vitamin Water and an energy drink because I knew I'd be up all night again.  By the time I went to lunch at Akers I was pretty hyper, so I had another cup of coffee. [a completely logical decision.]  Then, despite how pretty it was outside, I sat inside and drew. And drew. And drew.  I think I ate dinner in there somewhere.  Around 1 or maybe 2 (am, mind you) I chugged down most of a can of Amp before realizing that 1 can = 2 servings. then I started going insane...

I started posting random stuff on Facebook.  I worked right through sunrise and around 7:45 decided it was time for breakfast. took a shower. got back to work.  Realized that my heart was beating too quickly and I sometimes felt out of breath just sitting there drawing.  By this time, my writer's callous and right arm were getting sore, but I still had lots of work to do.  So I kept on working until 12:30, when I had to go to bio.  I was pretty freaking out because holy crap, I still had 2 drawings to do and I had to attach the book and shit I had like an hour after bio to do it.  I was so tired, too.  I started falling asleep and I'm pretty sure I hallucinated a little.  I thought a picture of a rain cloud was moving and raining, and that a bunny was breathing and twitching its head. [the prof never used animations in his slides, only still images.] Then I thought I saw... I don't know, water or something spurting out of the wall.  After class I picked up some food from Sparty's and went back to my dorm.  Then I really started freaking out.  I was straight up out of breath but just sitting there, and even though I knew I had everything under control I started crying.  I was like "no, you're wrong. Everything is fine.  Stop being illogical." but I kept crying anyway. [I'm pretty confident that this is the first and only panic attack I have ever experienced.] So I ate my food and watched my favorite videos on YouTube and felt better.  I finished up one of the empty pages, attached everything, and went to class where I threw up a poopless poop angel (complete with confused flies) onto the blank page.  Turned the little SOB in and mostly fell asleep through class.  By this time I was basically a zombie.  But the sun had come back out after clouds leading up to like a 5 minute rain, and I had the story off my damn chest, so I was feeling a little better. 

I happily turned in the books I'd used [for the research] and then bought some new earphones at the International Center.  I called Ben and YAY, he's coming to MSU on Saturday! <3 When I got home I did some German homework and went to bed.  At 7:45.  Then I woke up at 8:55... today. Oh my god. I wish I could sleep that deeply and blissfully every night.  So yeah, I would rate this experience about a 10 on the crazy scale.  Never, ever, ever drinking coffee again.  Or procrastinating so horribly. Ever.  I am so sorry for what I did to my body.  [closing about how my hand was cramping and I wanted to go outside]

*   *   *

I'd like to point out that I would have had an extra two hours to work on the project and probably not have a panic attack had I decided to skip bio the day the project was due.  But nooo, I had to be in class!!!!!  Compare this to my senior year when I was like "I'm behind on work in Lisa's class, so I'm going to skip Lisa's class today and work on the projects."  I certainly did change a lot in a few semesters.

And just for the record: my body still can't handle caffeine.  I don't know if I would always have been caffeine-sensitive, or if I broke the receptors in my brain that week or something.  But if I drink anything stronger than a black tea (or two black teas in a row), I get very shaky and breathing gets uncomfortable.  I don't get the energy boost and then I crash hard and pretty much can't function unless I take a nap.