Unsettled
By Sarah J. Hauser
@sarah.j.hauser
One of my kids is playing music in his room––and playing it loudly. This is how he calms down, Alexa at volume ten while banging his head in the air, as if he’s at a Metallica concert. I’m downstairs loading the dishwasher, but I can still hear the pounding drums through the floor. As a highly sensitive introvert, I don’t understand this. I much prefer peaceful, soothing, singer-songwriter type music to calm down. Better yet? Total silence.
But after a few minutes of electric guitar riffs and thumping bass, the music stops. And then I hear heavy, guttural sobs.
His cries come suddenly and loudly, signaling to me he probably head banged his way into the corner of his nightstand or bookshelf. “What’s wrong, Bud?” I say, nearly out of breath from running up the stairs to his room. When I walk through the door, I see his body fully intact but curled up in a ball on his bed, under his fleece dinosaur blanket, eyes spilling tears all over his sheets.
“What’s wrong?” I repeat, more urgency in my voice this time.
“I don’t want to tell you,” he mumbles in between sobs. “It’s too sad!”
“Aww, Bud. I’m so sorry. Sometimes it helps to talk about it, though.” I sit on the edge of his bed, trying to hide how desperately I want him to share with me.
He peeks his head out from under the blanket. “I just, it’s just … there was a song that came on … and it … ” he sniffles into the sheets, “It reminded me of my old school!” He lets out another sob, throwing his head into my lap.
The song that came on the Amazon playlist was one he sang with his old friends. Now, he was hearing it in a new home, in a new neighborhood, in a new city, in a new state––all those old things existing merely as a memory.
Tears start to form in my own eyes. “I’m so sorry. I miss your old school, too. That was a great place, wasn’t it?” He nodded as I rubbed his back. Moving is never easy, but my son and his siblings have been doing so well. He loves his new school. He’s the most extroverted human I know and has never met a stranger. Yet even someone like him, someone who easily adapts to new environments and already has friends, can feel like this. He’s in the in-between—the place where the loss of the old feels fresh, but the stability of the new is still out of reach.
The in between can be a lonely, unsettling place to be. For all of us.
***
“I’m so sorry for the mess,” I tell my next door neighbor when I answer the front door. I invite her in, apologizing for the barking dog and the dirty pajamas thrown on the steps and the packing paper strewn across the floor and the half-clothed toddler who keeps interrupting. “I thought we’d be more moved in by this point, but the boxes seem to never end!” I brush off my embarrassment with a laugh, but there’s no hiding how frazzled I am.
“Oh I get it,” she nods. “Years ago when we had young kids and moved, I remember sitting on the edge of my bed sobbing because I couldn’t find my socks.” My shoulders melt at her admission. It’s not just me.
I can’t help but think of the meltdown I had the day before. Like her socks, I couldn’t find my yoga mat. My own workouts had taken a back seat for the last few months, and when my kids were surprisingly calm and my motivation even more surprisingly high, I decided I should get back at it.
Except I couldn’t find my gear. The weights were still buried in a bin somewhere, and I thought I’d set my mat out in the garage, but apparently it got moved, hidden amidst the yard tools and empty moving boxes. It’s only a yoga mat, I thought. But the tears pouring out of my eyes proved otherwise. It wasn’t only a yoga mat. It was overwhelm and exhaustion and loneliness. It was not being able to settle into a routine and feeling like I haven’t taken care of myself and desperately wanting to work out the knots forming into boulders in my neck. And I couldn’t snap my fingers and make it better. I knew—I know—these things take time.
***
I once heard someone describe this in-between stage of uprooting your life to feeling like a plant plucked out of the ground, roots dangling in the air. You’re floating between two places, not sure when you’ll feel the ground again or when those roots will anchor back into the earth. I haven’t moved often over the course of my life, but I think that unsettled feeling can come with any significant change––a new job or having a baby or a formerly steady friendship shifting unexpectedly.
Even if you’re experiencing a welcomed change, it can be hard when you don’t have solid ground underneath you.
***
“Which place feels more like home, Illinois or North Carolina?” my husband asks. We’re sitting around the dinner table with our four kids, finishing up plates of pasta with Costco meatballs and sauce from a jar. The toddler bangs his fork on the table and yells at the rest of us for attention, but we persevere, attempting to have a conversation.
“Illinois.” The big three kids answer almost in unison. My heart feels sad, even though their answer doesn’t surprise me, especially since we’ve only been here for a couple months.
“I really like this house. And I like our school and that we live on a cul-de-sac,” my oldest son adds. He’s sensitive to how I might receive their feedback—I was the one first initiating the idea of moving. We agree there is so much to love about our current home, but as we talk, I can hear the sense of loss in their voices.
“Yeah, I think Illinois still feels more like home to me, too,” my husband adds. “Feeling at home here will take time.”
***
Apparently plants can go through “transplant shock.” A plant being moved from one place to another can experience symptoms like damaged roots and wilting. Be sure to keep root damage to a minimum when digging it out of the ground, the experts say, and then protect the uprooted plant from the elements as you’re moving it.[1] Plants during this stage are fragile and require more tenderness than normal. And once they’re in the ground, they need time to recover, to settle in after the stress of being uprooted.
But eventually, those roots will find their way deep into the earth, branching off in search of moisture and nutrients. Carefully tended, they will grow stronger. The process can’t be rushed, but with time the plant will anchor itself into the ground and find what it needs to thrive once again.
***
“Are we still good for meeting tomorrow?” a new friend texts. Can I call her that, yet? A friend? I’m not sure, but having left most of my other friends back in the Midwest, I promote her to friend status, at least in my own mind. She suggests a coffee shop close to my house and then asks if I know where it is.
“Tomorrow is great. Yes, I know where that is. See you then!” I reply. I was at that coffee shop last week, and ever so slowly, newness is transforming into familiarity. I can get there without Google maps, which feels like a victory. I know there will be ample parking, because this coffee shop is a small part of a much larger building. I even know which door to enter, so I won’t risk wandering aimlessly in search of our meeting spot like I did the first time I went there.
When I arrive, I order a fancy latte, opting to splurge with a little extra sugar, but I keep it decaf. My friend arrives a couple minutes after me, and we chat at the counter while we wait for her drink and then find our way to the wingback chairs towards the back of the shop.
The conversation flows easily enough. I learn she’s the same age as me, and two of her kids are the same age as two of mine. I make a mental note to follow up about a playdate. She asks me what brought us to North Carolina, and I share about how there wasn’t one big reason, necessarily, but a bunch of smaller reasons and a sense that we needed to go. We swap stories about moving across states and into new communities. Neither of us can explain exactly what our husbands do for a living, and we laugh at that fact.
I collect these interactions like a squirrel hoarding acorns or breadcrumbs for the hungry. I make it a point to accept and extend as many caffeinated (and decaffeinated) invitations as my schedule allows. This unsettled place, where you know people but don’t really know people, can feel lonely and tiring. But how else do you start knowing and being known by others, except by getting out in the world and inviting others into yours? The walls of my house will never feel like home if I hole myself up inside them.
I can’t rush relationships any more than I can rush a plant taking root into a new pot of soil. But I can set up coffee dates and introduce myself to the mom at the park and say hello to the people sitting in front of us at church. I can help my kids explore the neighborhood and cultivate their own friendships––their own roots in this new place.
And I can gently remind myself that you can’t make old friends instantly, and it’s hard to feel at home in a place where you have no memories. It takes patience, care, time, tending. At this stage, who knows which of our interactions will fizzle and which will turn into something more. But I’m determined to find out.
My phone alarm cuts our conversation short and reminds me I have to pick up my youngest from preschool. My friend and I toss our empty coffee cups in the trash and walk to our cars together, offering hugs and “let’s do this again sometime.”
We both mean it. And I can feel myself settling in a little bit more.
Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, four kids, and loud rescue dog. She loves to cook but rarely follows a recipe exactly, and you can almost always find her with a cup of coffee in hand. She is also the author of All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody, 2023). Find more writing and recipes to nourish your soul at sarahjhauser.com.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.
[1] Gross, Paula. “Master the Art of Transplanting—Fine Gardening.” Fine Gardening, www.finegardening.com/article/187-master-the-art-of-transplanting.