Moving Day

The last time I moved, it was across countries. I was getting on to a plane, as usual quite unaware of what I was getting into. I'm not known for my ability to look very deep into the future or to fully grasp the consequences of some big decisions. While I love to weigh things, and ruminate, my big decisions are always a snap judgement riding on a wave of emotion. I haven't always been right... but never fatally WRONG either.

It took me a long time to accept that the last time I moved, I was running away. I was unhappy, didn't fit, didn't know where I was headed, didn't feel like I belonged. In retrospect I was unconsciously looking for an escape route; but I honestly didn't realise it then. I had myself convinced I was moving for the sharp increase in salary, and so that I would have enough time to study due to fewer working hours. How else would you explain why someone who had never dreamed of becoming a flight attendant moving to an unknown city and joining of all things an airline?

It's the best decision I ever made. I grew in terms of my personality and confidence (although I've lost some intellectual confidence, which is all my own doing, and I'm working on it), and the sheer number of amazing friends I have made (mainly women) give the word 'girl power' a whole new meaning. Beyonce was right. Girls do run the world. These include the girls I have stayed with in the last five and a half years in this very apartment. They are my sisters here. My family. The shoulders I have soaked up in different times of heartbreak and despair, the ears I have reddened while venting about bad flights, bad haircuts, or simply... bad days. The ones I have embraced this new phase of my life with - independence and maturity. I love them so.

I was so starry eyed when I first walked into this apartment. The very first occupant in a spanking new apartment, in a flashy brand-new high-rise in Dubai. A complete change to the last years of living in a full, rowdy, colourful home in Nairobi; or a sardine in a can of other students in Delhi. You could taste and smell the independence. And I've been here for the last five-and-a-half years. Gulp! Has it been that long? But something in me has been yearning for some sort of change... some sort of movement. And I'd love the taste of just living on my own, for once, for a while. Because if all goes according to plan (and we all know how it seldom does), the NEXT move, will be the move back home.

So, in the next week to ten days. I'll be leaving. I'm excited, but apprehensive too. Happy, but with a catch in my throat. So this is what bittersweet tastes like. And there's panic, and terror: I have so much stuff!