I have moved house many, many times in the past. This upcoming move will be the 15th time in my life that I have upped sticks and gone to live elsewhere - sometimes it has been major, life changing moves (like moving from my childhood home when my parents split up, moving away to university) and sometimes it has been small, insignificant moves (the 4 addresses I had in Sheffield as a student).
None of the moves have felt quite as impactful as this one (although the 14-year-old me who moved to an entirely new country after my parents' messy breakup will definitely disagree).
I'm not particularly attached to this city. When I was growing up in a small village some 60 miles away, Cardiff was amazing - it had a Virgin Megastore! - and it was always alluring, as big cities are to teenagers who just want to be able to go on the train on their own and go shopping with friends (you can tell what I spent my Saturdays doing as a young teen).
We moved here because I had grand plans of doing my Masters degree at Cardiff University. I had researched and chosen a course that I was really excited about and I was so looking forward to the future, living somewhere moderately affordable with my other half, hopefully studying towards an actual career in something I really enjoyed.
Because bills exist, I continued to work my minimum wage job in the same shop I was working at in England and the thought of going to university again became sort of a daydream, because I was busy working and couldn't really see how becoming a student again would fit in with the need to pay rent and continue to, y'know, eat.
I was still weighing up my options when I found out I was pregnant and all thought of returning to uni disappeared. My priorities shifted. There was going to be a baby, something immensely more important than whether I could put MSc after my name. With this shift in priorities came the realisation that our flat was so utterly, completely unfit for purpose.
There was no room for a baby - a one bedroom flat with no storage, on the top floor of a converted house with FOUR sets of stairs to climb up is just fine when you're young and free, but try getting a pram, baby and shopping upstairs at the same time and it's a nightmare. We needed a bigger, better, family home.
The trouble with Cardiff seems to be that it's no longer designed for young families, at least not near the city centre or in any of the areas we were looking at (and I do appreciate that as we don't drive, we're quite limited in where we can go). Everywhere was either a flat, a house share or way too expensive, so I knew that we wouldn't be staying here for very long.
We are moving into our house in a small coastal town elsewhere in South Wales next week. It's a 3 bedroom house complete with utility room, conservatory and converted attic space and it is perfect for us. I'll probably never return to uni (which is fine by me because in a great stroke of luck I have somehow managed to land the kind of job I had wanted to go for after finishing my postgrad studies already) and so will probably never move back to this city.
Realistically, I know that our new home will be so good for us. The size of the house aside, we will have glorious things on our doorstep: family and friends, good schools, great walks, a picturesque harbour, a pub which we already know does amazing food.
I don't think I'm going to miss where we live now, not really. Our neighbours are twats, there is a constant smell of weed in the air, our landlady likes to steal our post every now and then. It's cramped and in need of a serious makeover. It takes me a really long time to get the baby to sleep because there is always, always someone shouting in the street. Etc., etc.
And yet at the same time, I know that I am going to miss it terribly. I know that in missing it, my heart will ache (slightly melodramatic there) and it makes no sense whatsoever. Sure, Cardiff is nice - it has all the shops you could ever want and there are little patches of beauty in parks dotted around the centre, plus there's a nice castle, but honestly, I'm bored of shops, the nice parks are too far away from us for it to not be a mission just to get there and we have been to the castle exactly twice despite us both holding 'keys to the castle' which grants us three years of free entry.
I have finally figured out that I am not going to miss the place. I am going to miss the memories and the feelings which are so easily remembered when you're surrounded by things which trigger memories.
Every time I see a number 95 bus I am instantly transported back to how it felt when I was on my way to work one day and suddenly realised that I was, without a shadow of a doubt, pregnant (and how did it feel? Dizzying, terrifying, the way it feels when you miss a step but don't fall).
I had my baby here. I brought her home to this flat, had my first sleepless night here (the little weirdo slept so well in her NHS-issued hospital cot). I watched crap film after crap film on Netflix at 4 in the morning during mammoth cluster feeding sessions. I held her little body so, so tightly in the dark as I listened to C snore next to us.
We went out with the pram for the first time here: we circled the block, I cried the entire time because I was so scared of taking her outside. It's where I got to know my baby - when C went back to work and it was just us, and I quickly realised that the key to a calm baby was to just talk and talk and talk, keeping up a constant narrative that made me feel as though I was in a reality TV show.
She has had so many firsts here and so have I. I am scared of forgetting everything when I'm not surrounded by the things that remind me of that baffling time with a brand new baby. It's here that I began to learn how to be a mother and for that Cardiff will always have a special place in my heart.
What I need to remember is that what is coming next is so exciting. There are even more firsts to come: the first time she crawls, her first step, her first school. I will continue to learn how to be a mother (because that's something that you keep learning), and in 5, 10 years time I know that I will ache for our time in the new house too.
This chapter of my life is coming to an end. It's an end to my pre-baby life: now we will always have 'family' homes, will always consider the schools and the play areas and the 'family friendly'-ness of anywhere we go. That, I think, is the crux of why I feel so emotional about moving away from here. I am a different person now to the person who initially moved here and moving is saying goodbye to her.
To be so acutely aware of a change in your life is a strange thing, but it is not a bad thing, not really.
