1. I’m looking for a new apartment to live in for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that getting hot water out of my current shower is a game of chance, and it doesn’t look like anyone is fixing it any time soon.

2. When I move, it will be to a place that will be my official address. Currently, I am still a Connecticut resident, but I’m about to become a New Yorker on paper.

3. That’s because I’m selling my Connecticut real estate.

Keeping it has felt like I’m clinging too tightly to my past and not looking forward. This week, when a tiny conundrum came up, a panic attack set in. I went to bed and dreamed of a dead, heavy animal hanging around my neck, and woke up with cold symptoms and nail marks on my arms from gripping myself in my sleep.

Message received.

This house is the only connection I have to the parts of my childhood that I really love thinking about. However, other things are there: art, friends and a slightly shaken but mostly alright sense of well-being and confidence. That will be enough. Those will be my roots.

4. Then I’m selling my car. That feels like an animal around my neck, too. One that gets parking tickets way too often.

5. My legal name change is still processing, but is almost done.

I’ll have a hearing, and then it will be official: Amber Marlow. This is so exciting, but stressful, of course, to think about changing my name on everything. It’s little sad, too, just because I really loved my old name, and, honestly, there are large patches of my old life that I’m still mourning. Do you know how many awesome cousins I got when I got married that I don’t have any more?

Why does no divorce literature talk about the cousins?

Inch forward. Inch forward. Inch forward.