I started packing up my life (i.e my apartment) yesterday. I’ve been putting if off for weeks now. I knew the end of my lease was coming, and I’ve known for a long time that 1). I was spending the summer in Atlanta 2). I was gonna move from my 2 bedroom into something else 3). I have a LOT of stuff.
Knowing all those things should have propelled me to get started on the packing all my sh*t up a lot sooner than 10 days before the move. But I am a procrastinator by nature and I really thought that something miraculous would happen so that I wouldn’t have to do the actual packing and sorting and throwing away.
Which brings me to why moving makes me sad. Moving forces me reflect on my life. It is once of the few (maybe the only) time I actually allow myself to think about what I’ve done over the year (I say a year b/c I tend to move once yearly) and if I’m any closer to doing whatever it is that I really want to do. For some super successful people, moving day would equal happy day and they would celebrate their progress. Unfortunately, I am not a super successful person, and moving day isn’t so much happy for me.
Packing only shows me all the things that I’ve been really excited about, spent money on, carted around, and promptly forgotten about. I have years (yes, years!!) worth of Self, Shape, Vogue, Glamour, Health magazines… and I don’t think I’m any more healthy or beautiful or fit because of them.
I found no less than 8, count ‘em-8!! books on how to pass the LSAT, as well as, the 116 Best Law Schools, So you want to be a lawyer?, at least 4 unfinished applications to law school, various catalogs for various law and public policy schools around the country. And I’m not in f-ing LAW SCHOOL!!!!!
I found a whole folder full of all the houses/condos/townhouses that I spent at least 6 months of my life meticulously poring over before I found the perfect one, had a panic attack, cried like a baby and chickened out of purchasing, assorted anatomy study guides for my aerobics instructor exam, as well has at least 50 books that I have purchased or stolen from friends that I have every intention to read but never got around to….. sigh. All the things that make me, while not quite a failure… definitely not a success.
So I think this is why I’m sad. Moving reminds me of all the things I was supposed to do, all the goals and dreams that I’ve put on hold, all the things that I don’t have time for and all the fun and/or interesting things that I’ve tried, but that for whatever reason just didn’t stick.
I want to believe that this is why I’m sad. But it could also be that as a small child we moved around a lot and since I didn’t own anything I liked it. Moving frequently works well with my short attention span and wander personality.
When we settled in Orange County, all I wanted was to live somewhere else. sadly, the one thing that made it happen was my parents’ divorce. We moving and it was simultaneously the best and the worst. College came shortly after and I moved out of my mother’s house and into a dorm room. Over 4 years of college I moved into and out of 3 more dorm rooms.
Every year I was sad. Sad that I was leaving, sad that everyone else was leaving, sad that things were changing, probably sad that I was going home and not going to some ultra fabulous locale where my life would finally start. After college, I lived with one of my cooler friends and life would have been grand if I have loved or even semi liked my job- which I didn’t. Which made my whole life suck.
After that experiment, I went home, back to my mother’s house. Where the wonderful job came, and I was supposed to be getting my life together and preparing to live on my own. Instead I lived in my old room, with all the crap that I have been collecting my entire life for 3 years! Fast forward to 2007, I’m grad school-bound, and some pivotal things have transpired to push me into semi-adulthood and alas, into my own apartment. Where life has been, mostly grand, with some really high points and a few not so high points thrown in as Life tends to do. And mostly I’ve felt really put together and on the right path, sort of.
Which brings me back to the freaking beginning. I think I’m still waiting for my life to begin. And I’m waiting for all the crap that I’ve been collecting, the plans, the self-help bullsh*t, all the unread books, all my failed attempts to journal to finally pay off. For once I’d like to move and not feel this overwhelming sense of loss and disappointment.
I’d like not to feel like I almost got it right, that I’m almost there, that if I push just a little harder that my f-ing life will finally begin and I’ll finally know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. But until then, I continue to pack up all my shit and just feel sad about the whole damn thing.
