On Moving

Written: 2025-08-08

A sort of continuation of the previous post.

This is... the 8th* time I've moved since I was born.

Every 3-4 years, bags are packed, boxes pile up in every room, and furniture disappear - all to be transporter some hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, where bags are then unpacked, boxes emptied, and furniture (re)built. It is a marathon of energy, time, stress, sweat and tears, every single time.

For half of those moves, I didn't really experience this whole exhausting process. I was either too young to remember, or my parents purposefully shipped the kids to camp or at the grandparents so we wouldn't be in their way. It was a rude awakening when I set out of my own.

Still, it doesn't mean that moving always come with smooth transitions, even if you're not involved with the moving itself. Moving hundreds of kilometers away is still an ordeal - especially as a child.

From one day to the next, you lose your social circles, your support system, familiar surroundings, comforting habits and routines... You have to get acquainted with new environments, meet new people and form new social circles/support systems, create new habits and routines (often with some compromises).

Being the new kid at school... is something - not an easy thing for an introvert. Being a teen going from city to country-side feels like a social death sentence.

The hardest one I've gone through as a child, still to this day, was the last "uninvolved" one. It's still so ingrained in my mind that I swore to never subject my potential children to it.

Months prior the move, we went on a weekend getaway to what would be the city (in a different country). There were talks of maybe moving there, but everything was still in hypothetical. We kids just thought it was a nice Easter weekend, visiting a place we never went to before.

Weeks pass by, school is about to end, and the news arrive: we're actually moving there. Not to worry, parents are handling everything, just go enjoy your summer and we'll see you back in two months!

Unsuspecting kids have fun. Parents are visiting houses, going through cultural workshop, packing boxes and having them moved, unpacking boxes and getting missing furniture, settling in their new jobs and routine, and everything else needed to make a move successful.

We kids arrive the day before school starts. Landing the evening before school starts. Into a country we visited for two days months prior. Without knowing a single word of the local language. Stopping at a house in a neighbourhood we hadn't seen, and barely remembered from pictures.

And before we could take it all in, we were pushed into a crowd of unknown faces, meeting the other kids who would share a classroom* for the next year (or three).

School was hard - us kids were struggling, even if our classmates were really chill and friendly, the school's level was much higher than what we were used to. Home was hard - everyone was trying to adapt but the pieces weren't fitting anymore. And our surrounding... the language sounded so foreign to our ears*, the climate was much wetter than expected, the people behaving so differently, and the food tasted different...

We missed our old home and the bigger garden, we missed our schools and our friends, we missed being close to family and seeing them often... To us kids, everything was all wrong! And we didn't ask for any of this!

Previous (and following moves) used to take us... weeks to a couple of months to get used to. That one took a full year.

Cultural shock was what did it. We all experience it a little, even when moving within one same country - different regions have different customs. But it's heightened when you cross borders.

First, everything feels new and exciting: you're like a tourist in an extended holiday. Then, you get disillusioned: nothing is what you're used to and you miss home and the way things were terribly. Third, if you're still there at that point, you start to adjust: you get used to where you are now, compromising with yourself, finding equivalence to make the pill go down easier. And only then, do you accept and make peace with yourself.

That second step is the hardest one to cross. Especially as a child. That was a very dark time for all of us then. But you get through it, eventually... or you go home.

Since then, I have moved again. Left the nest for uni, moved around some more, went to another country for a few years, and now came back.

Moving is still hard every time - really never gets easier. But you learn trick along the way.

There is so much to prepare for, but by then you sort of have a mental list of things that needs to be done (like what accounts to close, which to transfer, what to open, what should be sold/donated/thrown away by when, etc...). Then a lot of waiting around, which is pretty frustrating for sure, but that's when you need to relax and enjoy as much as possible the soon-to-be past environment. Because the real busy period of packing everything will arrive much faster than you think it will!

And those few weeks before and after the move are truly exhausting. Both in the physical aspect of packing and unpacking, of taking down and building back up, and in the emotional aspect (particularly when you need to downsize or when things break during moving, and honestly... the admin).

But when you're finally settled, and things slow down, that's when you really can enjoy yourself...

Welcome home.