two truths and one lie

musings on the move from literal hell, and portals dressed up as f*ckwits in disguise

You’ll have to forgive me because I am on the tail end of the move from literal hell.

I’m sleep deprived, on day 3 of my period, and it’s been almost two weeks since I’ve had a minute to write to you - but this one just had to be done.

I’ll save you the full sob story, but the short version: we always knew this move was going to be rough, because the house we’re moving into had been rented out since we bought it, so we packed our things into storage for 3 nights and Airbnb’d it until we could move in last Monday.

I had a bad feeling it was going to be rough. Bad vibes from the real estate agent managing the tenancy, and the moment we rocked up and they were still cleaning, I knew we were in for a big week.

Let’s just say it was a shit show. The night before we moved in, we were told a few windows were broken - annoying, but fine, as long as it was getting fixed. But the second I walked through the front gate, I knew that was going to be the least of our worries.

The inside of the house was disgusting. Dust on the pendant kitchen lights from a mile away, floors literally sopping wet - and I had movers coming in 15 minutes. I don’t think the cupboards, floors, or windows had been touched in 4 years. We immediately had to vacuum and mop up whatever the hell was on the floors before the movers arrived.

Then a pompous real estate agent showed up just as the movers did, to tell us “we couldn’t have had worse timing” moving in. I’m sorry sir, were we supposed to wait 5–7 business days so you could do a half-assed bond clean review?

We later found out that in the entire year he'd managed the property, he hadn't completed a single inspection. Fabulous.

I was elbows-deep in cleaning up god-knows-what off the living room floor when he said that, and I low-key wanted to punch Mr. Sleaze in the face.


But despite the royal shit show that was our move-in - I am utterly, totally, gregariously in love with our little home.

For the past 7 days I've scrubbed almost every square inch of this place (window tracks, beware - I'm coming for you next), painted our bedroom and the window sills to freshen it up.

7 days later I’m STILL finding paint in my hair, I did manage to get some on the wall despite how it looks

And bless our tenant - for what he lacked in basic hygiene, he's a painter by trade, and he painted the entire exterior for us and fixed our fencing before he left. That softened the blow while I was still on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen 3 days later.

We've moved to an area that feels so good - a few hundred metres from the beach, one of the shabbiest houses on the street (which my developer husband insists is always a sign of an excellent investment).

Living here, on this land, just feels right. What the house lacks, the palm trees, the giant pool, and the morning light streaming into our living room more than make up for.

Our 93-year-old neighbour, Bruce, invited us over for morning tea on Saturday and even knee-deep in unpacking, it was such a beautiful, wholesome feeling to be welcomed and hear all the juicy street tea.

the sunset from our front yard and the street of which I will be getting all the tea courtesy of Bruce

And while I’ve been elbows-deep in rubber gloves and bicarb (there is truly nothing baking soda can’t solve), I’ve had a lot of time to think.

This past year has felt like such a portal - so much change. When Chris first floated the idea of buying a duplex, selling our home to fund it, and moving into the house we thought we’d never live in until we built - I thought it was kind of dumb. Too risky. Too much uncertainty. Kinda a big pain in the ass. Hadn’t I already been through enough change these last few years?

Yet everything in my body said yes.

A past version of me would have spiralled this week - not just because the move was a shit show, but because as we’re getting close to closing on the duplex, almost everything that could go wrong there has. I don’t have the space to catch you up on the full drama, but while moving, we’ve also been finalising our construction loan - a beast of its own.

And yet, just because it’s been hard - just because everyone working with us seems to have the collective capacity of a squirrel with crippling ADHD - I still know it’s exactly the right move for us.

A past version of me would have poo-poo’d that. Manifestation should be easy, right? If you’re in alignment, things just flow and fall into place - right?

I’ve learned life is rarely that simple. And while God/Source/the Universe/the quantum field is good, two truths can - and often do - exist at the same moment.


I can be deeply annoyed at the incompetence of our rental management agent and deeply grateful to my husband at his never ending patience and ability to kindly communicate our disappointment (I would have used choice words that wouldn’t have landed as well).

I can be disgusted at whatever the hell was on my kitchen floor that I spent half a day scrubbing on my hands and knees and also deeply grateful for the belly laughs I have when two lovely ducks who fly into our pool every afternoon go for a little swim and my pups lose their damn minds watching them.

I can be frustrated by the fact that the valuer, broker and everyone in-between seems to be living their first day on earth handling a construction loan - and deeply grateful that my husband and I are crazy enough to pursue through the illogical logistics and have the nervous systems to hold this level of risk and pressure.

Sir Winston Mc Dougal + Charles Barkley utterly enthralled with the ducks

Two opposing truths can, and in my experience, exist at the same time. The only lie is that hurdles, hard moments, and feeling out of your depth mean something's wrong.

I think it means something is right. Because life isn't about things working out exactly as expected - it's about trusting they're working out for your highest good, regardless of what it looks like in any single snapshot of time.

I know deep in my soul that this move, this project, is the right next step. We could make a good return from it, or we could not - neither is guaranteed. But either way, we'll figure it out, and learn exactly what we need for the next right step after that.

This isn’t about things NEEDING to be hard, it’s about accepting reality as it is and trusting our soul nudges will always move us in the right direction.

One of my favourites, Byron Katie, says: "when I fight with reality I'm only wrong 100% of the time." That quote has pissed me off as many times as it's lifted a lifetime of shame off my shoulders.

The more I try to live by it, the lighter I feel, the easier it is to take risks past-me never would have, and the more gracefully I move through my wins and losses without letting them touch my inherent worth.

That's kind of the whole point. People like you and I - when we feel called to do big things - can also feel the weight of the world in every little decision along the way.

But I think that's exactly the point of this move-from-hell portal: allowing the most mundane life tasks to become the life-altering portals they truly are. Letting the beautiful exist in the same moment as the hair-pulling frustration.

We’re not here to WAIT for the New Earth to arrive - I think it’s in these very moments that we help it land.

The messy path is the portal.

One of my favourite books, Dissolve the Problem by Richard Dotts - not widely known, incredibly simple but poignant - constantly reminds me that problems don't really exist. Circumstances exist. Our resistance to them is the only place the "problem" actually lives.

I really believe it's in these small, imperfect moments - where we let two truths exist at once - that we break the exact spell keeping us from living the frequency we're chasing "someday." And when we allow that imperfection in, it becomes so much easier to stretch ourselves, to make the moves we'd make if we knew we couldn't fail.

When we put our whole ass, heart and trust into the Universe and trust those nudges of our soul’s truth, even if the path isn’t perfect, that’s the exact sign that we’re living in it, now.

Isn't that exactly the point? I think so. But I'd love to hear from you - tell me below.

Am I just a crazy, sleep-deprived mess? Or can moves and annoying life tasks really be the portals we need, into exactly the timeline we've been waiting for?

xx
Elise

P.S. One of the many silver linings of this chaos - zero cramps, zero pain, barely any pre-period psychosis (aka PMDD) despite the stress. Endlessly grateful to the peptides for helping me stay symptom-free with adenomyosis through all of this. And honestly I’m kinda surprised given that stress would always be a huge trigger for me. Full update coming this week.