Eager? Anxious!

Our suitcases are packed. Because we have to make sure everything fits - not because I'm that eager.
People here keep saying to me "oh, I bet you can't wait to get back to the States" and it is driving me nuts. To me, that implies that I am the reason that we are moving. Because I don't like it here or miss my family. It's so wrong. A huge part of me doesn't want to move. We're only doing it because of the housing opportunity that came our way. I want to see Ireland and Scotland. I want to go back to Paris (with Nid not on crutches). I want to see where he grew up and there were all these places he wanted to show me from different times in his life. We'll never get to do those things, and it makes me sad. I want to move the least of all the members of my family, but people keep saying things that make me out to be the one that wants to go the most.

I do miss my family, but I lived two hours from them for seven years and some years only saw them three to four times in the whole year. I've only talked to my mom on the phone a handful of times since I moved here, and I go weeks and months without talking to my friends and other family members. Only since the new year have my sister and I gotten on an every week schedule, but that doesn't always work out either.

It might sound wrong, but I miss my animals the most.  Before moving I'd only ever been away from them for a few days at a time in 10 years. They were my day to day companions. Smudge will move in with us once we get settled, but Bearette won't be. It makes me sadder to think of seeing her regularly at my parents house and leaving her over and over again than to think of never seeing her again. I miss her so much I cry every time I think of her. I'm crying now. But is it going to be worse when I see her every week, maybe more than once a week and can't bring her home with me? I think it's going to suck royally! So, when people say "you must be so happy to be moving back" I just want to scream at them.

I am happy about a lot of things. We've got a great deal with our little cottage. The kids will have grandparents three miles away. They'll have the great outdoors at their doorstep. The move is a good idea. It will be good for us. All of us. But I just feel, over and over, that I need to defend the fact that I am not the reason we are moving. It is not because I don't like it here. It is not because I have not "settled" or anything of the sort. It is because it is a good idea for our family, and the timing is right.