A few weeks ago, I stopped getting texts from my friends.

Not all of them; just two in particular - two of my closest friends in my town, the two friends I made when I first moved here. We started hanging out because we all have sons the same age, and then we kept hanging out because we liked each other so much. And now we just hang out, because we're a part of each other's lives and that's that.

One of the things I was really worried about when we left the city was making friends. I wrote about this a lot: I had this vision of spending playdates making stilted conversation with "friends" who were really just people I hung out with because it was convenient, not because either of us actually wanted to. And then I met my friends - those two women I met when I first moved, and then another and another and another - and they were smart and thoughtful and funny and compassionate and made me feel like I could talk to them about anything at all, and so I did.

Six years ago, when my life changed, it started with a chair.

I've written here many times about the struggle that life in my late twenties was; how crushed I felt by the weight of just how much I had turned out to not be what I'd hoped to become. I was stuck in a job that I hated, in a life that felt millions of miles away from the life I'd dreamed of as a little girl, and there was a time - a long time, actually - when I couldn't see how any moment in the future could possibly bring with it something better. Or even something different.

And then, at a party late one night, I met a girl who did something called "blogging." I'd heard of blogging, sort of - I mean, I had a rough idea of what a blog was, had even started a hidden Blogger account documenting my worst dates (oh my god), and read Perez Hilton like it was my part-time job - but I certainly didn't know it was something that one could even consider doing for a living. And yet this girl seemed to, somehow...and at that moment I was so desperate for something to change that when she asked me to do an "audition" of sorts to become a contributor for her site, I said yes without a moment's hesitation.

We're about halfway packed - my strategy is to do at least a couple of boxes every day - and about five weeks from the date of our departure (officially May 21st), and the house is starting to fill up with emptiness.

It's hard, watching these rooms that I put together so carefully - and loved so much - get broken down. Dust from the endless boxes getting dragged up from the basement is settling into the cracks along the sideboards; all the photos are wrapped up in plastic; we're eating meals off of the same four dishes every day, because they're the only ones left that I haven't packed. With each passing day, our house feels less like "our house," and more like a place we're staying in for the time being, before moving on to the next thing.

And not knowing what that "next thing" is - because we still don't* - makes it harder to let go of what we do know.