Where I’ve Been Lately

Where I’ve Been Lately

I haven’t been able to write for months.

Not because I didn’t have thoughts, but because the effort it took to turn them into sentences felt like more than I had. Every time I tried to sit down and write, my brain felt foggy and heavy. I would lay in bed at night, wide awake with so much running through my mind, but the thought of trying to string it all together just felt impossible. I kept telling myself I’d come back to it when things settled down, but they didn’t. And neither did I.

A lot changed this year.

We moved out of our home of five years in Taylorsville, into our rental in Mt. Washington, and finally into our long-term home in J-Town. From the outside, it looks like progress. A goal reached. We wanted to be closer into town, and being able to sell our house vacant felt like the most practical option. No showings while living there. No constant cleaning. No juggling animals (8 of them....one about the same size as me)

It made sense. And I know we were lucky to even have that option.

But choosing something because it’s practical doesn’t mean it’s easy to live through.

The last six months stretched everything thin. Our finances were tight. Our marriage felt the strain. My mental health slowly declined from manageable to something I had to actively push through every day. It reinforced something I already knew but clearly needed to relearn. Mental health isn’t something you solve and move on from. It’s something you maintain, and when the structure holding it up starts to slip, you feel it fast.

For me, that started with losing my routines.

When we moved into the rental, we knew it wouldn’t be comfortable. I just assumed it would be temporary. A few months at most. We moved in June, going from a 3,200 square foot house to around 1,200 square feet. We had to be selective about what we brought. What mattered enough to come with us. What didn’t, stayed in storage.

That meant leaving most of my home gym behind and combining my workout space with my office. I tried to keep my routine going, but the longer we stayed, the more crowded the space became. Boxes piled up. Furniture filled every corner. By the end, there was barely room to move. I had a narrow path to my desk and a narrow path back out. There was nowhere to work out.

I know the obvious solution is going to a gym. But that’s never been something I’m comfortable with. It doesn’t motivate me, it stresses me out. And financially, it wasn’t an option anyway. We were paying two mortgages, two sets of bills, and trying to keep everything spotless for underwriting. Every dollar mattered.

So over the course of six months, I went from daily workouts, sauna time, and meditation to nothing. I didn’t really notice how much it affected me until I was deep in it. When you remove the things that keep you regulated, everything else gets harder to manage. The things I enjoyed doing before seemed impossible. I couldn't even finish reading a chapter, forget a whole book. It all seemed so exhausting, and my brain couldn't stop thinking enough to relax.

The space itself didn’t help.

We moved three dogs and five cats into a house that was about 2,000 square feet smaller, with the same furniture we’d always had. I wasn’t buying new furniture for a temporary place. Our couch took up most of the living room. There was one walking path through the house, and that was it.

My dogs had no space to move inside. No room to stretch or run. I know they felt it too. The backyard gave them an outlet, but inside felt tight and overwhelming. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just reality.

Layer on top of that the stress of selling and buying a house at the same time, and it became a lot to carry. Anyone who’s been through underwriting knows how intense it feels. Every purchase is scrutinized. Every expense is tracked and questioned. We were paying for two homes while trying to look financially perfect on paper. I lived in a constant state of tension for months. It felt like my body never fully relaxed.

And it’s hard to talk about that without feeling like I’m complaining. We chose this path. We made the decisions. But when things don’t play out the way you expected, it messes with you. It made me question whether we made the right call. Should we move back into the old house? Should we even be trying to make this move? Did we pick the wrong time, etc.? The what-ifs just kept on piling up in my brain. Selling our house alone was its own exhausting experience, one I’m not ready to unpack fully yet. We had more issues pop up than I anticipated, due to factors entirely beyond our control, yet these issues were hindering our progress. And I couldn't do anything to fix the situation, just give it time. I have zero patience already, and more time meant more double bills. It felt never-ending.

Now we’re here. We’ve moved in. The boxes are unpacked. Life is slowly settling.

And I’m still tired.

Not in a "get more sleep" way (trust me, I've tried that.) Just worn down. My energy is low. My motivation comes and goes. I don’t feel like myself yet again, and that’s been hard to accept. I feel like I just started to get my groove back and make progress in figuring out who I was again, just to get pulled back down. Everyone keeps telling me how well I handled everything, but the truth is, the only person who really saw how much I was struggling was my wife. And she carried the weight of that with me, even when it wasn’t fair to her.

Grief has changed me in ways I’m still understanding. It’s changed my capacity, my patience, and how much stress I can hold at one time. I didn’t think I could lose my footing again after everything I’ve already survived, but I did. And that’s been humbling.

What I’m learning now is that two things can be true at the same time.

I can be grateful that we’re here and still feel worn out by how we got here. I can be relieved that it worked out, and still need time to recover from the process. I don’t have to rush myself into feeling excited just because this was a milestone.

This isn’t me starting over. It’s me slowing down and being honest about where I am.

So if I’ve been quiet. If I stopped replying. If I felt distant or off, it wasn’t personal. I was just trying to get through a season that asked more from me than I realized I had. And now, I'm trying to protect my peace while I slowly refill my cup.

And for now, that’s enough.