As the summer approaches, many of us will pick up our family and all that we know to move across the country, or even the world for our spouse’s job. This isn’t new to us. As military families, we totally understand that we move every two to three years, sometimes shorter or sometimes longer if we are lucky. For me, what seems even harder to fathom is leaving a place that I love so much — a place that really feels like home to me. So, with all that said, I am currently experiencing the “PCS Funk,” a combination of being in denial, scared, nervous, sad, and upset — among many other emotions.
We’ve known for quite some time that the move was coming, but because we didn’t have the hard copy orders, I could sleep easy at night and would always pray that a miracle would happen, and we would get to stay at our current duty station. Well, that miracle didn’t happen and the orders came. The reality that we were indeed moving hit me like a ton of bricks. We had a family vacation planned to go on a Disney cruise as one of our last Florida adventures. We had an amazing time and then it was back to the reality that we were moving in six weeks, and I was totally behind on all the prep work.
Moving is a logistical nightmare, and for a type-A, control freak, it sometimes feels like my whole world is spiraling out of control.
I thrive on routine, and my family will be without one of those for several months as we get readjusted. For the past several weeks, I have procrastinated and neglected planning for our PCS. One day I told my husband, “I just really don’t care.” I laugh at that because I care about EVERYTHING. At our house, 99.9 percent of the time everything has its perfect place or drawer, our house is clean and ready for guests, the meals are planned for the week on our chalkboard in the kitchen and the washer and dryer are constantly humming delivering fresh, clean clothes. This makes my world go round and how sad is that?!
Enter the PCS. It is the night before our movers come. I’ve abandoned my Type-A tendencies with this move, and honestly it feels kind of good. I’m literally flying by the seat of my pants right now, but there are a few things I know:
- Our household goods will get moved.
- We will forget to pack something. Thank the Lord for Amazon Prime and Target!
- We will be living out of suitcases for at least the next month. There will be lots of laundry and probably lots of re-wearing of dirty clothes … OK that may be stretching it.
- We will eat lots of yummy food and junk food, too!
- We will make memories.
- There will be things we LOVE about our new duty station; it just may take some time to figure those things out.
- Life will go on.
Preparing for this move has been good for me. Although I am still in a funk, I am slowly starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know we have a long, long way to go, but I also know that I need to embrace this incredibly amazing experience for my family. Things will not be perfect and our routine will be completely out of whack, but life will go on, and several years from now, we will look back and be amazed at all we have done.
How do you feel about PCSing? Do you enjoy the change or is it hard to move?
