HOME | a reflection on moving and moving on | poetry reading | HANNAH SCHOENBEIN
Emma and I are officially moving out of our first place together 😭
We've outgrown our space physically and emotionally and we truly believe its important for us to begin our married life with a clean slate in a place that truly feels like home. We found the perfect apartment with everything we've ever wanted and more and we're so excited to be moving out at the end of the month.
This is a video that sort of came together in my head. I was lying awake one night after a long day of packing and I couldn't sleep. Seeing the walls completely bare made me feel like I was living in a stranger's home and I started to cry. In moments like that, my first instinct is to write, so that's what I did.
I wrote this poem in probably no more than 5 minutes and went straight to bed. My first time reading it was the following morning and I decided to record myself reading it out loud (I do this sometimes to help with my editing process). The poem you hear me reading in this video is from that recording-- I didn't edit the poem at all and I only read it that one time. I then listened to the recording out loud while walking around my apartment, admiring the emptiness, the mess, the cat scratches on the walls and the worn down carpet. Hearing this poem aloud gave me a new appreciation for the life we have lived in this place.
While recording the clips, I wanted to depict the strange dichotomy of simultaneously loving and hating a place; never wanting to leave, yet never been more ready to return the key. It is such a strange place to be in, but creating this video has allowed me to feel all of those feelings and turn them into a sort of art-- making my feelings and memories feel almost tangible.
I've been reflecting on the last two years we've spent in our apartment and how much change and growth we've experienced without even realizing it: Covid was just beginning, we weren't engaged yet, we only had one kitten, I was working a part-time job, I hadn't started therapy or medication yet (yikes), and we were truly living in what I consider a "fantasy" world. Everything was bliss-- until it wasn't.
My mental health crumbled and I was left with what felt like a shell of a body to drag around each day, pretending like I was okay when we both knew I was as far from okay as it gets. And still, even on our worst days, Em and I have been able to support one another and grow so much together. I really think that remembering all of those moments is what has made me so emotional during the moving process. But we are both so ready to leave that pain in the past and take all of this new growth with us to our new home.
If you've made it this far into my long-winded, drawn-out explanation of this piece, I'll leave you on this visual that my therapist gave me this week-- she told me to think about myself in 2020, first moving into this apartment, as a caterpillar-- young and oblivious and unsure about where my life would take me. The pain and growth I was experiencing was me making a cocoon for myself and hiding inside of it was me in the darkest stages of depression, knowing it would get better one day but still unable to see the light. Packing up and moving is me breaking thing out of my cocoon-- my wings are weak and weighed down, representing the discomfort I feel while moving from one stage of life to another. On our moving day, I'll take my first flight as a butterfly into our new home and from there... well, the story is waiting to be continued. Cheers to whatever comes next. ❤️
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My social media: @hmsbanana
Em's social media: @emmablauser
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Music credits:
Music by Mighty Meditation - Tides - https://thmatc.co/?l=5ED6DB9C
Poetry credits:
"home" written and performed by Hannah Schoenbein