I recently had to make a pretty significant move across the country for some not-so-fun reasons, and it's been a pretty opressive experience. On one hand, I'm a bit of a collector and over the years have gathered a decent amount of stuff. Lots of this stuff is part of a more maximal decor style (this is me trying to convince both of us that I'm not a hoarder - I can see my floor very clearly), but it still weighed on me to have spent the time packing each and every item.
I've lived on my own for some time now, so I have a full apartment's worth of furniture and decoration and things, plus all of the random interests I jump into and out of has meant that I have a pretty good set of storage boxes that contain the currently-inactive hobbies while those currently active are out in full display.
Seeing my entire life packed up into boxes and storage bins and taken apart on the floor was a surreal experience. This was the first move I had done in a long while that wasn't just across town, and certainly the first move I've done as what I would consider a "legitimate" adult - with a "career" and real life responsibilities. Nobody warns you how much space a bed frame takes up in a moving truck, and every cubic inch feels like ten when you can't just "take another trip".
I think in some ways the move hasn't really even hit me yet, in part due to how stressful the act of moving itself was and how much I had to focus on every little piece of logistics. While all of my possessions were being driven on the back of some semi truck cross-country, I was stuck in the remnants of my (admittedly already substandard) apartment with nothing but a mattress on the floor, a couple days of clothes, a toothbrush, and my cats. The cats and I were booked on a flight the following week. The entire last week in my old place was a flurry of activity, selling off a few things I decided weren't worth the move, patching up drywall, trying to spot-paint the walls, only to realize my bastard landlord gave me the wrong color of paint, to which their solution was simply "well paint the full wall". Or else lose out on my security deposit, I gathered.
The day of the flight comes, I'm up at 5:30AM. The flight's not until noon but I need the morning to do the final clean up of my unit -- again, can't just come back later for it. I pawn off the mattress to someone on craigslist, use the sparse cleaning supplies I left for myself to give everything a once-over, and shove the last remnants of my occupancy into a checked bag (this will be 2.5lbs over the weight limit). A friend comes to pick me up to take me to the airport, we stuff everything in their car. A TSA agent takes pity on me and lets me go through a separate VIP line for screening with the cats. We wait at the gate for some time before boarding. The flight attendant gives me one of those plastic wing pins they give to little kids for each of my cats because they're cute (they're drugged and wide-eyed in their carriers).
I arrive in the new airport, in the new city. It takes forever to get out of the terminals. When I make it to my new apartment, empty, dark, and cold, I let the cats out of their carriers in our new bathroom. The next day all of my stuff gets delivered.
I spend 10+ hours two days in a row unpacking. I'm still not fully unpacked.
I've been texting and calling all my friends in my old city. They miss me. I miss them. They can't believe I'm not there anymore. I can.
When is it supposed to hit you that your life has changed so much, in such a short amount of time? Does it come all at once, or is it so slow you only realize in retrospect? Will the feeling be all-consuming, or will it be another little piece of grief you carefully stack with the rest to carry with you forever?