Friends, this is the first blog post I have written from the spare room in my mother's house in which I will be living for the foreseeable future. I have mentioned a few times that I would have to be moving out of the (rather unpleasant) apartment in which I have been living for the last three years, and that process is mostly complete. Anything vital to my identity and daily functioning is now here in this room. Only some random sundries and a few large pieces of unwanted furniture that require a borrowed truck to be hauled away remain at my previous residence. I took the bed apart the other day while I was packing boxes. I didn't have to, but I wanted to. Something about the bed being apart made it feel more final. And I wanted that finality.
Not that I had slept in it in several days. There was already a bed in this room, and I have been sleeping on that since the transfer. A transfer that passed a milestone before I knew it was going to. For you see, when I went to bed in the apartment for the final time, I didn't know it would be my final time sleeping there. I figured I'd have at least a few more evenings there.
Yet a few unforeseen circumstances made it easier to sleep here one night. The next day I had moved several more pieces than I thought I would, and before I knew it, I was back here at night permanently. I never bedded down with the sensation of it being my final night in what I have called home since 2008.
I've decided it was better that way. It decreased the likelihood of me dwelling on this already difficult step I am taking.
I do have the tendency to dwell. To be sentimental about change. Believe me, I won't miss this particular apartment for very long, as I have wanted to live elsewhere for at least a year. Yet I will miss the idea of having an apartment, as I have covered on the blog already. That's its own thing.
Yet even if I had moved directly into another, better apartment, I still would have had the tendency to observe the "last meal in this apartment. Last shower in this apartment. Last full night in this apartment." That's just what I am, and in about half the cases it not only is unproductive, it is probably counterproductive.
This week, I haven't had time to do much of that. A separate crisis here, a fire to put out there. All happened during the already stressful final week of moving out. (Luckily I have been moving bit by bit for the last month.) So I have really only been catching brief glimpses of my soon to be former apartment this last week as I wisk in to pack a box or two and wisk out again. All of a sudden, very little clue remains in that building that it was my home for years. Just a few things.
And I was going to write a post about them. The markings on the wall. The indentations in the carpet. The last vestiges of my three years there which have remained unpacked, sitting where I last put them when I still lived there, serving now as the only reminders that someone had a life in Apartment A for the last three years.
But I opted to not write that post.
I have been doing a pretty good job, as I said, of not thinking too much about this whole unfortunate situation. The extra flurry of unfortunate events that has surrounded my move has forced me to push some of those mental tendencies off to the side of my mind, and focus more on actions. And while the sentimentality is still very much present, standing on top of a nearby hillside looking down on me as I move about, there simply wasn't room for it to stand right by my shoulder this week where it normally would have been. There was too much extra shit going on outside of my move, and I just refused delivery.
And you know what? I discovered that some of this has been easier as a result. And though the manic running about and crisis management has stabilized in the last few days, I have been unwilling to allow the sentimentality monster to take its frequent place beside me now. Even though there may be room for it again. It's not a horrible creature, and in some cases it serves an admirable purpose. But not in this case.
When I pack what few boxes still need to be packed, I consciously make the choice not to ponder the symbolism of a now empty room, or the outline of the framed picture that I took down from that section of the wall. I have been making the choice to be as clinical about all of this as possible. Being forced to be so last week showed me what an advantage such an approach can have.
Plus I know that times ahead will be difficult enough in some ways without being all poetic about what is over. That place was home. It no longer is. I do not live there anymore. It is nothing more than a storage facility that my rent entitles me to hold on to for another 12 days. And it's not like I had my first child there, or that it was the first place I had after getting married. (I may have allowed a bit more nostalgia if that had been the case.)
I now reside in my mother's spare room, which I have painted, furnished, and continue to tweak so as to allow for maximum privacy and seclusion. (Though I will admit I have arranged certain things in a manner similar to the apartment, so I feel a bit more "at home" as it were.) It is from here that I have to rebuild and reboot certain things. Things that in their own right, by the sheer volume of the energy required will take up quite a bit of thinking.
I admit I am not sure I am up to the task. But I do know that I now have every intention to just let the apartment go. Let that chapter go. As fate would have it I won't even be in town on the final day of the lease to turn in the key. I have to have someone else do so in my stead, because I will be out of town. It's as though everything conspired to prevent me from dwelling too often on this situation.
So, other than to mention that this blog, my Twitter presence, and the vast majority of people from social media came into my life whilst living in that apartment, I will take no further time in considering the end of my residence there. I have work to do in the coming months. (And a pie to bake in the coming days.)
Monday, November 21, 2011
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2 comments:
Beautifully written.
It sounds like you had enough other distractions to make moving less of an ordeal than you'd perhaps expected, especially since you'd been moving bit by bit instead of waiting until the last second. You've had time to process the upheaval without having to focus on processing on the upheaval, so it happened in spite of yourself. No wonder you had to decide NOT to write about it when you usually would have just written about it, no questions asked. And you sought after finality that came when you took the bed apart.
Also, there's a certain relief in having things be OVER, of being able to get away from the planning and the execution and the immediate aftermath where you're staring at all the boxes you have to pack, unpack and things you have to rearrange.
How did you feel, writing from your new residence, looking at your newly-familiar surroundings?
It was interesting to be writing from here. I lived in this room years ago, but I have remodeled it as I said. And now it bears little resemblance to what it was before. So indeed it really is like "recently familiar" surroundings.
It gives me a sense of beginning in a way. Doing something as normal as my Monday afternoon blog post from where I live now has helped to ground me a bit into the new situation. It will still take some time to adjust, but it helps me remember that Some things will continue. That what I create need not be contingent on where I am.
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