Slipstream
Blue Moons, moving house, and the upheaval of change
Yesterday, my partner and I moved house. We decided to leave city-centre life for a more rural village location, hoping to soothe jangled nerves, mental ill-health and asthmatic lungs.
In and around boxes and bags we’re slowly starting to settle and make the space ours, a process that will no doubt take a while. As previous residents of multiple flats we now have a house, and instead of the greyscape of railway lines, our view is now green and lush. For the first time in my adult life, and at the age of forty six, I finally have a garden. The added bonus is that it comes with a wall of blackberry bushes, elderberries in fruit, a Cox’s apple tree and a sprouting of rhubarb; things that we didn’t notice until yesterday. My foraging dreams have come true all at once!
On the other side of this excitement — and gratitude — is complete and utter overwhelm at the scale of change. My entire being feels like it has been turned upside down, shaken hard, then turned up the other way again with all routine in flux and everything around me unfamiliar, except my partner. Finding change difficult is a known autistic trait. As such, I avoid change at all costs. I’ve lost count of the times that I have stayed in a damaging situation because the thought of going through change — even to something better — is too much for me to process. This time I’ve known throughout each stage of moving home what the time scale would be, what the logistics would be, what smaller chunks the process could be broken down into and I’ve had time prepare for it all. But it still doesn’t stop the inner turmoil that comes with actual change.
The smells in the house are different and nothing is recognisable. All our items are in different cupboards and on different shelves. The furniture has to be arranged differently. The journey to work is different. The shops are different. The noises around the house and outside are different. The scenery is different. My route from bedroom to kitchen and back again is different. It’s all different, different, different. And I can’t quite compute that level of change. Whilst I know intellectually that I will find a new routine in time and things will become familiar again, emotionally and neurologically everything feels fragmented and on the periphery of a shut-down. Autism in action.
This week in therapy, we again talked about sitting with — and tolerating— difficult emotions as a way of regulating. I’m not sure how that’s going at the moment…
As a way of trying to find something familiar in a sea of the unfamiliar, I’ve been looking back over our walks in nature during August. It was a month of foraging and abundance in all things plant-related. As with all seasons, the turning of the wheel moves beautifully through each stage of the year, unearthing treasures that I previously hadn't noticed or showing them in a different light — quite literally sometimes.
Hawthorn berries glossy and dark red, picked, then lightly squished and added to brandy to make a tincture. Apples from the nature reserve’s orchard eaten on the spot (with permission granted). Medlars and quinces hard and sour but perfect for roasting and eaten with a dollop of clotted cream. Sloes ready to steep in gin. A smattering of the last hazelnuts. Barely a vestige remained after the squirrels feasted early. We happened to have found a handful of nuts (at most) and they were delicious. Blackberry bushes as far as the eye could see once you’d made your way though winding paths along seldom-walked routes. There was so much swollen fruit. Such a contrast from last years extreme-heat dearth. This year I gathered enough for jam and a blackberry and chocolate birthday cake for C. For the first time ever, I tasted fresh mulberries picked from a communal tree, having only ever tried them in a jam before.
Now we’re on the precipice of Autumn. The last twenty four hours brought us a Blue Moon. September 1st is only an hour away and no doubt the days will now march rapidly towards the year’s end. In the meantime I want to savour and notice the landscape as it moves through the months. In and around everything else that feels so uncertain, I find stability in nature’s reliable rhythm.
For the next month I’m going to take a breather from posting here, in order to find my feet in my new home and new place. I’m hoping for a routine to establish itself and a subsequent feeling of being firmer on my feet. I'll write again soon. In the meantime, thank you for reading.
