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Hi Jessica,
I'm a city dweller living in units with effectively no useful view of the night sky, so I have to stick to what I am happy to lug around.
I've had at various times:
- an 8" f/7 Newtonian with fixed OTA (ie not a truss) on a big heavy equatorial mount with RA drive,
- then switched to a C8 (compromise),
- built a 32cm f/3.7 lightweight trusss Newtonian on an altaz mount,
- switched to a 6" f/5 Newtonian (film photography) + 4" f/10 Maksutov (guidescope) on a commercial equatorial;
- got rid of everything when CCD's were on the horizon; and
- recently bought a 102mm f/7 ED refractor (wide field) + a 180mm f/15 Maksutov (lunar & planetary) which share an altaz mount.
Of these...
The 8" Newtonian was impossible in the city. Like yours, big, heavy, while I could transport it, it was a real turn-off. Sold it to buy the C8, thinking it was more portable ... well yes, but optically inferior to the Newtonian and it had a whole set of problems of its own. Disappointed by the C8, sold it and built the 12".
My lightweight truss 12" f/3.7 saw quite a lot of use mainly for looking at galaxies from a dark sky site, even though it suffered terribly from coma, and magnification was not a strong point either so it was not ideal for wide field stuff, and quite hopeless for lunar and planetary. Individually the pieces were light enough to be easily lifted and assembly/disassembly took 10 minutes.
Of the two scopes I have now, I bought the 102mm f/7 ED refractor as a grab & go however in reality I grab the Mak instead and often leave the refractor , which has become little more than a very big finder for the Mak. Both are easy for me to lift, they can be assembled on an altaz mount in about 1 minute.
So in conclusion I'd say buy the largest aperture SCT you are comfortable with lifting, at least the 6" lightswitch or possibly the Meade 8".
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