Faster than expected

It felt like we had only just moved into our apartment, but we were already leaving.  I still remembered with clarity the excitement of getting the keys.  The agent walking out of the apartment and knowing that I was living in my own place.  Not a place that I was renting, but my very own place.  I had expected to have been here almost indefinitely (or at the very least for quite a long time), and instead after only a few years I was off again.   It had been a far shorter stay than I expected or planned.

As I stood in the apartment, everything being packed away by the removalists, I felt a strange feeling.  It wasn't the same as previous moves.  I remembered those moves.  In those moves I felt clearly the pang of leaving somewhere that was close and important to me, of leaving my home.

I didn't have the same feeling this time.

I had experienced a lot in this apartment and yet it didn't have the same feeling of home to me.  Was it because I had moved too much?  Or was it that I just hadn't been in this apartment for long enough?