It's the roots that make moving hard. The moving experience is comparable to the process of a plant being transplanted from one patch of ground to another. As a plant and the dirt around it are dug up, inevitably, roots are left behind. The plant still survives, but small pieces of the root system are left in the ground where it once resided. These roots will deteriorate into the soil around them, but not for years after the living part is gone.
This is how I have come to understand the process of moving. When I put roots into the soil of my community, a part of me dies when it is time to go. As much as I would like to retract all of me, and carry it with me, a part of me remains. I emerge in the new location different than I did in the last. I've grown, but I've also suffered loss. I dread the process. It's not physical pain, but it is real.
I look at the other plants next to me, the ones that stay rooted, and it's hard to tell them, "This piece of ground doesn't fit me anymore. I'm leaving, and I'll never be back." And of course, there are the potted plants. The ones that never put down roots. They live in their self-contained environment, and don't get mixed with other's dirt. These are the quickest to tell you that moving doesn't hurt, because it doesn't hurt them. But they never grow. How can they? There's not room for growth in a pot.
I long for a permanent ground where my roots will always stretch to new lengths. Until that time, I will continue to leave a part of me behind, and recover in the next soil long enough to move again.
