I started to pack up all my things
tonight, even though I'm not
moving out for another two weeks. I figured it would take a while.
Eighteen years is not easy to put away.
I felt like I was running away, not stepping into something planned. I felt like an angry suburban teenager in the throes of rebellion, tossing sweatshirts into laundry bags and deciding what I would need to survive on my own. On my own. I have always been on my own. I don't need a new address to tell me this.
After an hour of rifling through dusty drawers, trying on silly halloween costumes from fifth grade (the fairy outfit is now skimpy enough to shock even my cat), and half-crying over pictures of old friends, I stopped. I looked around. The dust had settled. Everything I needed was in front of me, except for a few odds and ends. Could it be possible? My life, in one night? I mean, a lot of my clothes were kept out for the next couple weeks, but still....should I be worrying? I've always thought I'd be the kind of person who would never be able to put things in order. I like this kind of person. I want to be complicated, with dark secrets lurking in the corners of my life and shocking everyone when they are revealed. All I had was a fairy costume.
My books lay in a pile on the floor, falling all over each other like an absurdist pose from Waiting for Godot, never to get up but still trying. Oh...how symbolic. Fuck symbolic, they're just books. Yes, they're just things. Which is why it shouldn't disturb me that my entire life up to this moment could be sorted, piled, classified and put into neat little piles in the space of a couple of hours. And on a Monday, no less.
I am more than what I own. At least, I sincerely hope I am, because if someone told me that I could be sorted and defined in two hours I would spit in their faces like the immature child that I am. A child, on my own. With lots of books. And sweaters.