Wandering Woman Buys House
Last week, my husband and I closed on a house. I almost immediately panicked. While I have claimed for my entire adult life that I was sick of moving and just wanted to settle down somewhere, my immediate panic upon buying a more permanent residence threw that desire into question. My life has been marked by moving, and part of my brain will always see moving to a new city as a fail-safe if things aren’t working out. Any problem I’ve ever had I felt could be solved by simply packing up and gettin’ out. It always seems more promising to me to move than to power through and make my current place work.
So far, I’ve lived in: California (twice), Japan, Maryland, Pennsylvania (twice), Alabama, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Delaware (twice), New York, Illinois, and Missouri. The longest stretch of time I’ve ever lived around one city were the eight years my family spent in the east suburbs of Pittsburgh (first through eighth grade). And even then, we split those eight years between two different school districts. The longest amount of time I’ve ever lived in one physical dwelling is four years, which I have managed to do three times in my 39 and a half years.
I’ve always had a lot of conflicted feelings about moving. I took a creative non-fiction class in college in which I wrote a personal essay called “Hometownlessness.” In it, I explored the awkwardness I felt when someone would ask me, “So, where are you from?” I hoped that after college, I’d lay down roots long and deep enough to give me the feeling that I was from a place rather than just currently residing in a place. This did not happen.
I have both lamented and celebrated moving around so much. I threw the mother of all hissy fits when my dad told us we were moving to Alabama right before I started high school. But, it turned out great! I had an A+ group of friends who had the same mix of funny, sociable, and good-kid energy that I brought to the table (thanks, marching band!) At the same time, when I graduated from high school and moved away, my parents also moved away. This meant I never got to have those fun/awkward meet-ups with old friends when I came back from college. I don’t get to visit my parents back in some hometown and run into my 8th grade history teacher or our old neighbors. I feel a disconnect with most people in that I don’t have a place to claim as my own. I have no place to return to feel like I’m coming “home.” I don’t have a deep history with people in any one place.
I’ve always felt a bit like an anthropologist; like I’m observing various communities and cultures from the outside but never fully of them. I find this fun and exciting, but also exhausting. This has only been execerbated in my continuously failed attempts to get a permanent professor-ing job. If the thing I wanted most as a kid was to finally be settled permanently in a place, I picked the academic profession at the wrong time. As faculty lines are turned more and more into fixed-term, part-time, and visiting positions I have found myself jumping from school to school as my contracts run out and schools fail to see the worth in keeping me around.
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At the start of 2024, I was sitting in a VAP job with another year and a half on my contract. In the fall, I’m going to have to apply for the permanent line if I want to stay. Knowing this, I still felt compelled to finally say to my husband, “I think I want to look at buying a house this year.” I don’t know if it was my panicking over TikTok finance bros predicting the housing market will soon get so bad that if we didn’t buy soon we’d be shut out forever, or I just hit my breaking point in “trying to keep my options open.” Anxiety forces me to plan for all possible outcomes, rather than choosing what I want and trying my hardest to make it work. Academia also demands of us that we move to whatever school grants us the great honor of employment. And after 5 years of jumping through hoops chasing jobs at these schools that do not care about me, I hit my breaking point.
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While I am overcome with a great amount of anxiety in buying a house, I also feel some amount of regained control in making a decision to stay. I keep looking at jobs in Minnesota and Maine and New York and wondering “did I just cut off possibilities for myself?” But I’m trying to remind myself that it’s ok for me to hitch my boat to a dock I chose rather than letting the river take me where it will, running myself ragged trying to prepare for every possible eventuality.