Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The Last, at Last

My final night at the old apartment is being marked by nothing. See, I called it "the old apartment". I've already moved. My bed hasn't, and some piles of crap haven't, but everything else is at the apartment - "the new apartment" - i.e. home. I'm here now, at "the old apartment" (non-home, ex-home), marking my final night with nothing.

No last episode of Friends.

No last frozen dinner on the couch.

No last ritual airing-out of the foyer, which always seemed to smell like dead animal.

Okay, the place itself isn't much of a loss. I don't know whether I'm trying to be unsentimental or if there really isn't anything to be sentimental about. I have lived here for four whole years, which makes it the second longest I've lived anywhere. But, they were four tumultuous years. I have lived here with three different people, all good friends. But, we barely saw each other, same address or not. I have lived here through a lot of life changes. But, not the kind of changes that stopped me eating frozen dinners on the couch most nights. (That's less pathetic than it sounds. I do like them.) Sometimes I wonder, when the good and bad balance like this, whether anything has happened at all. That kind of tree-falls-in-the-forest thinking can drive you mad.

Pragmatist answer to the question: IT DOESN'T MATTER. I like it.

So, it seems that unsentimental is the way to go. No last anything, no photographs, no kissing the ground. This is weird for me. I tend to flail, emotionally. I cry when things go changing. I think up words that mean how I feel and write them down, arrange them. That I did, I guess. Just one more: okay.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

So, September

I have an appointment tomorrow to pick up keys. My next apartment sits waiting, empty, lead-tested and roach-bombed. It's old. It has the kind of hardwood floors that happened before hardwood floors got to be so chic. I worry that it's haunted but am willing to make friends with spirits if I must. It's in the place where I wanted to be.

So, I'm moving tomorrow. Or rather, as of tomorrow I've officially and for all postal purposes arrived at a new address. I have until the end of the month to vacate the current apartment, thankfully; I haven't even begun dismantling shelves and furniture. Paintings and lamps and ceramic items are still on display, undisturbed as they've been for four years. I can't make myself do the packing. It's better, for me, to put things together than to take them apart.

In two weeks I'll have done it anyway, because that's what the deal is - and it's sweeter than most. I do appreciate the large window of time that good luck and nice people have opened for me in this move. But I hate chaos. It puts me completely off-game. Last moving day, I woke up shaking at 4am, dropped a box of books on my foot, crashed my parents’ van into a guard rail, and ended up on the floor of my bare apartment, rocking back and forth singing show tunes. I wish that was an exaggeration.

So, I'm aiming to get through it. To the part where there's paint on the walls and mugs in the cupboard. September. Books grouped by genre, alphebetized by author. September. Towels washed and rolled up, clothes hanging by color. September, September. It'll all be fine and fabulous then.

Monday, August 06, 2007

The Birthday/Comeback

At 10:06 this morning, my exact birthminute, I was wearing sweaty gym clothes and slouching in an armchair with my computer on my lap, struggling to write what was meant to be a very entertaining email reply to a friend. It took me an hour and consisted of four sentences. Picture that. It's fairly representative of my first twenty-six years, which have been all about struggling to do easy things that aren't, and failing (though valiantly) to look and smell better than God seems to have intended.

But let me not give you the impression that I'm not a blazing success, because I am. I've been told that nobody does angst like I do.

Nobody! Hell. Yeah.

Anyway, it's a happy-hopeful candy-colored sort of day, the birthday, so I'll keep it positive and make only one new year's resolution: to finish the things I start.

That is, you'll be hearing more from me.