We're moving to Texas.

Or as my sister said, "are you kidding?"

We're moving to Houston*. In August.

I don't even know what I feel like typing that sentence. Heartbroken. Excited. Devastated. Hopeful. Peaceful. Nauseous. It's kind like a strange out of body experience, & I feel like I need to keep staring at the words that I just typed so that it can continue to more fully absorb. Because I can't really believe it myself.

Houston, Texas. THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS. Texas. 

My emotions are thisthisclose to the surface & I've cried in far too many inappropriate places over the past several days. My right eye has been twitching nonstop since Mike got his official offer while we were in St. Thomas last week, & that tight feeling has apparently made a permanent home in my chest. 

I met with a leader in our church today & he made the comment that when he first met Mike & me over six years ago, we were just babies. We really were! Twenty two & twenty four years old, newly married, & just complete novices about life in general. Six years later! We've built our marriage here. We've built careers, built roots & built a family - both of friends, & of our own. We've watched people come & go, all the while never feeling that tug to go somewhere else ourselves. New York has been the only home we've known together, & going away somehow feels like an act of betrayal, or maybe even like giving up (because it takes a lot of work to make it really work in the city, especially with a family). It's neither of course, but the insecurities nag at my confidence. To say that we've loved New York would be a ridiculous understatement, because it's like saying that we've also loved chocolate ice cream & cozy sweaters on chilly fall days or something. This is our home & we have felt so loved & settled here. We never intended to leave, & have always said that we'd stay as long as the opportunity continued to exist. It has & we've felt really blessed along the way. We've evolved into real New Yorkers. You know, the kind that really get the jokes in Tina Fey's book about the 6 train, the kind that have babies without ever discussing an exit strategy. What we didn't expect was that another opportunity would come up somewhere else without us looking for it. And that all of a sudden, we are those people that are leaving. 

I wish that I could write like Emma (or think like Emma - she's beautiful, & brilliant in a way that just isn't fair), because she is so good at articulating the experience of watching people go. It's one of those things that make life in the city hard, the outward & inward flow that seems to happen every summer. We have always been on the watching end, which is perhaps why the going feels so surreal. I wish that I could properly share the feeling of community that exists in the city, amongst our friends, & between the people in our church congregation. I'm convinced that the city is entirely unique. That it is special, the kind of special that you can in no way grasp if you've only lived here for a summer, or vacationed for a weekend, when you haven't poured yourself into it, & then witnessed it give back to you. The alumni of New York City are always going to share something that is almost indefinable.

Kylie took these photos a few weeks ago for us, around the same time that I told Kelsey that nothing will come of these Houston discussions, so it's not even worth talking about. Really! A few weeks later, & just two days ago, Mike resigned from his job & committed to going to another firm for a fantastic opportunity. He would likely say that resigning from a wonderful firm where he's worked with wonderful people for a half-dozen years was one of the hardest experiences he's ever had.

So now I'm here with all of these spinning thoughts at night ranging from wondering what car to buy (should I even be allowed on the road? I've barely driven since 2005), to how to go grocery shopping with a baby in the suburbs, to whether or not I will ever make friends again (replacing friends is of course not an option). I'm wondering what we're going to do with the free time that we'll have this summer (Mike has 50 days of garden leave), when & where we'll see various family & friends, & how on earth I can possibly cope knowing that my little boy isn't going to remember this city. All of our years here are replaying in my head like a movie, & I keep wondering if it really is possible to untangle who I am with New York (no), & what that means for me once I'm not here any more.  

Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths. 

I am excited. I am. I've never had a washer & dryer in my living space, & I have visions of closets that are bigger than Quinn's nursery. There are perks of suburbia that I'm sure will be wonderful & happy (a garbage disposal! trunk space for groceries vs. carrying everything I purchase!). We'll be closer to my family for the first time in years, I'll get to decorate a home that has more than three rooms (new bedding is already purchased - I'm coping by shopping) & Quinn will have some room to run (once he learns how). And I'm proud of my husband! So, so very proud. Because he's smart, hard working, & is really talented - talented enough that people work really, really hard for a really long time to get him to work for them! He loves me, he loves his son & he just wants us to be a happy family. I'm grateful for him & for this new opportunity for us. I know it's right, I know it's right, I know it's right. 

But my heart really hurts, & I'm just a little bit scared.

I'm extra happy that we have these pretty photos from Kylie in our city. 

That's all I've got in me for today. 

*If you know anything great about Houston / have a friend in Houston / live in Houston / know where Houston is on a map / have something nice to say about Houston, please email me. If you have terrible things to say about Houston / used to live there & hated Houston / can only talk about the heat + humidity + hurricanes + tornadoes in Houston, please go away & stop telling me about it right after I tell you I'm moving there with my husband & child.