First of all, THIS APARTMENT IS AWESOME. There are so many windows I feel like I might OD on sunlight. We’re still in the process of unpacking and arranging and everything, but already I can tell it’s going to be nice.

What’s been interesting to me about this whole process is how the anxiety has functioned throughout. It’s been keeping me up, so by the time I got done with work on Wednesday – knowing I had a long night of packing ahead of me – I had to buy coffee. Which I never do. I have one in the morning, and that’s it. And it’s not just my anxiety, either. I’m sure the dude was feeling some, and I know the dog was. She was so freaked out when we took her to the new apartment that she was shaking off and on for a couple of hours and crying, which she never does. It was my job to stay with her in the new place while the dude helped the movers get the furniture brought up, and sitting there next to her was such a lesson in empathy. She couldn’t understand my words, so all I could do was pet her and make sure I was speaking soothingly. And it hit me- that’s often what I want, too. I don’t care about the words because, frankly, most of what people usually say is not what I want to hear. I just want someone to rub my back or cuddle me and make soothing sounds. Thank goodness for the dude.

There are some ways, though, that this move has helped me see how normal it is to feel anxiety. The not sleeping well last night was not my individual anxiety disorder, it was a thing that all humans do. And that kind of felt super good; even though not sleeping sucks, it was nice to roll over in the middle of the night and know that the dude was up, and so was the dog. It made me feel like we’re a family and we’re all in this together, and anyone with anxiety knows that one of the hardest parts about it is the isolation.

Hopefully tonight we can make the shift from a family that wakes up to a family that sleeps like the dead.