Black and White Photography · film photography · life

Saying Goodbye – Moving & the Next Chapter

After my parents moved us from New York to Florida, they were divorced when I was 3, and from then on my mom had to move us from rental to rental each time the rent was raised. As a kid, I actually enjoyed it. I got the chance to redecorate my room each time like painting a new canvas, but once my mother remarried, we settled in for a bit longer. The house I just moved out from was owned by them and then passed to me when they divorced. I’d been there since I was 18 years old until now.

My Old Home

As a photographer, I of course felt the need to photograph every bit of this home to remember it before we left. Thinking back to the many homes I’ve lived in, I wish we had taken photos of them as well.

Hasselblad 500CM
Ilford FP4 125

I walked the perimeter of the home to catch all of the signs of age and life. The house was built in 2005 and has served us well since then. You can see all its scars and life marks from over the years.

The screen ripped from a family of squirrels that once raised their babies behind our hurricane shutters

After a house is built, it no longer stands as just wood and cement crafted together for a sale. It becomes a home where life happens. It witnesses sadness, love, sickness, happiness, anger and yelling. It stands over you as winds howl and rains fall. It becomes part of your life.

As I said before, I’ve lived in many houses but I was surprised to find that besides the home my parents built when we moved here in 1989, I’ve never felt sadness when leaving any of the others as I have now. I’m surprised because I experienced a lot of horrible things under its roof; sickness near death, a toxic relationship, ptsd to the point where I couldn’t sleep in my room for a while just to name a few. However, despite all of those things, the one thing that remained constant was this home. My safe place to go when I needed comfort.

New Beginnings

You may be wondering why I would leave that home if it meant that much to me. There’s several reasons, one being my mom needing to get out of the place she was living since a rise in crime, but also to start fresh and begin a life with Kelsey of our own making. I wanted to leave behind all of those bad memories so we could start our life on a good note.

Kelsey packing up the garage

Saying Goodbye

Seeing the house empty for the first time in 16 years was surreal. Dust bunnies rolled along the floor and our voices echoed off the walls.

I’ll miss the beautiful light that came through the windows, and the trees I grew in the yard.

However, I won’t be far away. In fact my mom is moving back into the house and we will only be two blocks away. While its comforting to know she will be there to care for my trees and to fix up the house the way I couldn’t, it won’t be the same will it? Now it will be her home. Thats the way it should be though.

My now empty office where I filmed my YouTube videos

Through it all, life continues to go on and new memories are made. I’ve always felt that life is like being on a runaway train, and we are all hanging on to the outside. People drop off and pass away as we keep going in the distance, but we continue to hold on until we can’t anymore. There’s nothing we can do to stop it. The only thing we can do is enjoy every second we have while we are still holding on.

The Next Chapter

Our new home is beautiful, and we are very excited and blessed to have it. We will have room to grow our family, and I am already getting to know the light this new place offers.

Im going to be taking a lot of pictures in this house. I can already tell. I hope you’ll stick around to see the next exciting chapter in our lives.

PLEASE take a moment to sign up to get my articles in your inbox!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this soppy love letter to my old home. As an artist I often feel the urge to express myself in this way and I hope you can relate.

Until next time, stay motivated and keep shooting.

14 thoughts on “Saying Goodbye – Moving & the Next Chapter

  1. I love the way you think! I wish previous owners of my house had photographed it. I live in a house that was built in 1933, and was renovated and built out several times since, generally by people who did so on the cheap and without an eye towards preservation or even just keeping the construction true to the original style. As a result, my house is a mutt! I wish someone had left a trail of photographs somewhere so I could see how the house originally looked, both inside and out. Alas, the house was never considered historic or even all that interesting, so no photographic record has turned up anywhere. Even just a search of the city’s records came up dry. I found a copy of what I think was a building permit, with the name of the builder stamped on it, and that’s all. (My neighborhood was a relatively new, mostly undeveloped part of the city in 1933, and it was apparently common for the city to just do cursory permitting and paperwork for housing starts there at the time, probably to help encourage construction.) Wishing you all the best in your new home.

  2. The best of luck to you both on your new chapter. Your new home looks lovely and I’ll be looking forward to your newsletter and pictures. Hugs to both of you. Laura

  3. I lived in my last house for 10 years but it held so many memories, it was hard to leave it. So I get you. But sometimes it’s just time to move on!

  4. I have also lived in quite a few houses/apartments/homes. When older I took photos of them when I moved in, but never when I moved out. Such a nice idea and so well done.

Leave a Reply