Cutting the Cord

We moved to Romania thinking the house would follow us. That was the plan: leave, list, sell, move forward. Clean. Simple. That's the kind of transition you imagine when you are still in the part of deciding that follows orders.

But the reality we walked was harsher. The renovations stalled. The listing got delayed. When the house finally went up, there were four walkthroughs. Four. We dropped the price by seventy thousand dollars and still the house sat. Empty. The sixty thousand dollars of work and the mountain of love we had put into it sat inside it, with no one to appreciate it.

From Romania, we carried it. The mortgage, utilities, the cost of a life we were no longer living. Month after month through a winter we were not there for. It was brutal. But there was light, too. People who loved us flew out, drove over, showed up to do the things we could not do from here: breathing life back into the house, coordinating the shipping, liquidating what we couldn't take. We sold at a loss that may determine a future that doesn't include a house for awhile.

But, today it closed. With a period.

I have been trying to find the right word for what I feel. Relief is in there, but it is too clean. What I feel is something closer to what soldiers must mean when they talk about finally getting out of the field. Not happiness. Not victory. The exhaustion of someone who has been holding a position for a very long time and has just been told they can stop.

We reach this finish line bloody.

The Ocean

Somewhere on the water right now, our things are in a container on a ship. My books, my heart in a box. The objects we decided were worth shipping across an ocean rather than selling for nothing in our liquidation. For months they sat in a basement waiting, the same basement where the rest of our former life was quietly dismantled.

They have finally shaken free and I can't quite explain the feeling. For the first time in a year, the version of who we are now will merge with the things that represented who we were.

America

While I am elated to finally close this chapter, this also finalizes some painful losses. We created a beautiful home that we loved. I don't want to let the ending erase it. We put real work and real money and real care into that house and we were proud of it. Some of the happiest memories of my life live in that home.

What was so painful was the timing of it all. In January 2025, everything shifted. The dollar fell from .97 to .85 against the euro and has not recovered since. An investment we were counting on froze because of a policy decision. Then the tariffs. The economic uncertainty. The once vibrant housing market slowed to nothing. Everything was illiquid at once, and all of it hit at the same moment we needed it to move.

That is what happens when a country makes a series of decisions and ordinary people absorb the damage. People who acted carefully, dreamed wholeheartedly, and planned responsibly. We realize we are not the only ones. We aren't even close to the most impacted.

But who's got time to hang on the resentment?

What We Built

We have fought for the life we have here.

We recently bought a car. For a year before that, getting groceries meant catching a bus or walking. Coordinating a restaurant launch required negotiation with apps and schedules and roads to get supplies and groceries from point A to point B. We hadn't lived without cars since we were teens. We will never take our wheels for granted again.

We have a printer now. Immigration paperwork does not pause because you don't have one. Romania runs on paper. Every business document, every accounting form, every immigration submission has to be physically filed, signed in blue ink, handed over in person, or sometimes by courier. There is no uploading a PDF and calling it done. For a year, every document meant a trip to a print shop, coordinating timing, hoping nothing needed a last minute correction, then getting it somewhere in person. I have never felt more grateful to have a printer and that magical "print" button.

We now have a crockpot. Cooking in a kitchen without the familiar tools you have used your whole life is its own particular disorientation. The slow cooker has always been home to me, though it is not common here. I remember how comforting it was to make my first batch of bone broth on the counter.

This has been endurance through the fog. Finding our way. Creating a new normal.

The Ending

In two weeks, we will have been in Romania for a year.

I didn't expect the year to look like this. I thought we would arrive and stabilize, instead of starting the longest suspension of our lives. Present here, hemorrhaging there, unable to fully land anywhere.

The house is finally a closing chapter. It kept us obligated, not just financially, but in so many ways. It meant we were still maintaining a life we had already left. I'm relieved to cut that cord. What remains is a number. We hold our breath as we watch the currency exchange rate knowing the loss will be profound, but hoping the dollar holds where it's at.

But underneath the math is something else. Our dog is gone. My cat, who I held while he went to sleep, is gone. The home I poured myself into is gone. Some of the friendships I thought were solid have gone strange with distance. Cultural and language familiarity is gone, too.

And processing all of it while learning to live from scratch. Getting groceries without a car. Navigating immigration paperwork through print shops because Romania runs on paper, signed in blue ink, submitted in person. Cooking without my familiar crockpot in an unfamiliar kitchen. The low-grade friction of nothing working quite the way you expect, sustained for a year, while everything else was also on fire.

The cost to get here was great.

I grieve all of it.

But I am also celebrating.

Because we climbed this peak. We decided to change our lives and we paid the full price of that initiation. The mountain of work is finished: the renovations, the listing, the carrying costs, the coordination across seven time zones, the logistics, the loss. All of it is done. The chapter that would not close has finally, today, closed.

This was a marathon of endurance. We are standing at a hard-won finish line. Beat up, but we made it. Together. With our things on the water and Romania under our feet and the longest, most expensive, most exhausting chapter of this transition finally over.

For the last few weeks, finishing this chapter meant living on American hours from Romania. Answering questions at midnight. Keeping connections open with neighbors, making sure friends got the furniture they needed, making sure everyone had what they needed to close this out from seven time zones away. It has meant 2am bedtimes and early mornings and the particular exhaustion of being present in two places at once for just a little longer.

10 PM is going to feel really good tonight.