If all goes according to plan, I am moving to a condo at the end of April.
If all goes according to plan, I am moving to a condo at the end of April.
I always put this on when I move...
I actually need to start planning my roadtrip/moving playlist now.
Originally Posted by Fynn
I want to move, but I just don't want to have to go through the process of moving.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
I don't mind moving, I like the feeling of a new place and unpacking. Everything is in the right place and nice and clean....all the old, unwanted crap is tossed/sold/donated...it feels cleansing. (I've moved 7 times in the past 10 years)
Just remember that a case of beer and a couple of pizzas is the international language of help me and you'll be fine.
Margarita Moving Day!
I hate moving. Well just the packing and moving part and how you always end up finding you have way more trout than you thought you had.
I love the unpacking and making the new place look pretty part.
Part One
The first time I remember moving house, I was a teenager, and my mother, brother and I were being evicted from our house of fifteen years; an inevitable consequence of not paying one's rent. It is the kind of thing that looms in one's consciousness, some blatant threat upon the horizon, but other questions clamor for attention, there is no time for forward-thinking in a mind closed off by violence, constant fear giving way to the very first bendings of depression, will we see the police today? Will I eat today? Will my life be threatened today, and by how much? Will I pass, today?
This time lingers in my mind as a jumble of stress - charity food parcels, keeping up appearances, chaotic displacement, sifting through eighteen years worth of artifacts and attempting what is most crucial to archive, and what could not deliver comfort, not matter how tightly it was clung to. Hopeless garage sales where strangers grab and haggle over every little thing, the total lack of power, of hope, of help. What you cannot sell, you attempt to give away, to discard, but somehow there is not enough space to store things, and not enough time to save you. You reduce, and reduce, and reduce, and still you take up too much space, even if you give away your pet cockatiel, press heirlooms into the hands of embarrassed friends, leave boxes of refuse on the side of the road that people poke through while you stand at the window, face turned away.
What sort of person would miss this house, anyway? Rotted floorboards, the very paper peeling away from the walls in an attempt to escape, black mould rain and asbestos showers every other day, cross your fingers before you attempt to turn on a light, doors that have been smashed in by all manners of violent acts, a dishwasher that billows out smoke, a garage that caves in on itself and a sagging fence. The whole place is suitable only to be knocked down and forgotten, but this is your home, the only sort of place that you belong, but not the only thing you would break away from in those terrible months.
From there, we moved into a two-bedroom apartment, such a small place to share with an angsty, hyperactive boy and an erratic, violent alcoholic. We did not share that place for long - my brother soon summoned help, and was ushered into the protective wing of child services. It is funny, it is so common to speak of the rights you gain as an adult, but there are also rights that disintegrate along with your childhood, and thus being too old, I did not join him. No one - no police officer, court official, friend or family member - even mentioned my safety at all, and who am I to assume I might deserve such a thing?
Having driven out her son, and largely also her boyfriend, there was no one left to serve as buffer between her and I - not even my childhood cat, which had been eaten alive from the inside out, stomach wriggling with maggots before it was mercifully put down. I became the sole target of her ramblings; an escalation of beatings, interrogations, hounding for money for the one-armed bandit or some bottom-shelf vodka. I could come home and find an unexplained absence, broken glass, or a suicide note, or a passed out husk of a woman. To pass through that door is to play one's own game of russian roulette. Even when you win, you have lost something.
One morning a friend and her father arrived at our small flat while my mother was gone. There was a sense of urgency around, but efficiency and resolve as well. Together, we packed up every last thing I might call mine, from my single bed to the half-carton of soy milk in our fridge. I took down every poster, every fridge magnet, every scrawled post-it note, scrubbed the spot where I kept my toothbrush in the sink. Vacuumed, put away the dishes. I took our photo albums, leaving her only a volume of pictures from her own unhappy childhood, and another that was a few years old, and had the last dregs of my brother and I within its pages. She would later throw them away.
While my friend and her father waited in the car, I took a last look around. I remembered the summer, that blaring ache of sunshine that served only to punctuate my misery. The time my mother arrived home from work early and found me pacing our kitchen, weeping; the only time in my life I have asked for her assistance, and her answer: You are too young to be depressed, I am the one who should be upset. Tracing a line down the edge of the telephone, I recalled all of my transmissions, failed and flowering; frantic attempts at location, at signalling distress. My room was no longer my own, it was a non-room, a spare room, containing only the torment and relief of absence.
Leaving the key on the kitchen counter, I locked the door from the inside and closed it firmly behind me. I did not leave a note. I often wonder what my mother's reaction was as she crossed through that doorway, if she was capable of anything at all.
I've never moved from this house. Hopefully in the not very distant future that will have changed.
4444444444 4 4 444 44 4
Sam's gonna be farther awaaaay.
Sorry, babes.Sam's gonna be farther awaaaay.
Moving is the worst thing in the world and it can smurf off.
Allow me to recount the number of times I have moved throughout my lifetime.
Oak Harbor, WA -> Lynnwood, WA
Lynnwood, WA -> Bothell, WA
Bothell, WA -> Helena, MT
Helena, MT -> Manhattan, MT
Manhattan, MT -> Bozeman, MT
Bozeman, MT -> Belgrade, MT
Belgrade, MT -> Some other house in Belgrade, MT
That house in Belgrade, MT -> Bozeman, MT
Bozeman, MT -> Some other house in Bozeman, MT
That house in Bozeman, MT -> An apartment in Bozeman, MT
That apartment in Bozeman, MT -> Back to a house in Bozeman, MT
Bozeman, MT -> Oak Harbor, WA
Oak Harbor, WA -> Bozeman, MT
At some point during this process I have lost approximately 80% of everything I have ever owned, including a lot of really great video games
I hate moving, it is awful and the worst thing in the world.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
