When I Move
There’s a pile of boxes sitting in the corner of my room. I’ve been meaning to break them down for weeks now, but it always seems like the kind of thing best left for Tuesday trash night and then Tuesday rolls around and I should really go to the gym or make some lentils or finish the first season of Frasier (no spoilers please). Now every night when I rub my makeup off—and every morning when I wipe off whatever dark under-eye gunk I didn’t get off the night before—I toss my used cotton pads on top of the pile of boxes. I’ll have to break down the boxes when I move.
In my sock drawer is a stash of three condoms expired two years ago that I brought with me from my last apartment and I think the apartment before that as well. I don’t even keep condoms in my sock drawer anymore because I’m not fifteen and I have a bedside table, but I haven’t had the mental energy to cull down the contents of that drawer in years. Next time I move though. For sure.
I bought two glasses with bears on them that I’ve been storing in their original bubble wrap for after I move. Immediately after purchasing the glasses I got so sentimentally attached to the bears on the them that I became terrified of putting them in a communal cupboard because my fragile heart couldn’t take it if one of the bears broke. I once cried over bagel bites, and a couple weeks ago I cried while making book recommendations, and last night I cried over the Celtics trading Isaiah Thomas. I think one of the bears breaking would break me.
There is a Frank Stella print rolled up in a mailing tube next to my door, begging every morning to be framed. There’s a spot on my bedroom wall begging for a large print. There’s a frame shop I found that will only charge me half of an outrageous amount to frame it. But if it’s framed it’ll be so much more likely to break in the moving van, so sometimes I pull it out to look at it before rolling it up and putting it back in the dark sturdy tube that I’ll bring with me when I move.
For five years, I’ve lived my life this way, making mental lists in preparation for that move that finally brings me, not to a new apartment, but somewhere closer to home. I’ve been planning it since I first set foot in San Francisco. It’s usually a move back to the Northeast, but occasionally it becomes a move to Chicago or Toronto. And according to the Millennial think piece industry, I’m not alone, with almost half of my fellow Bay Area transplants making similar not-quite-plans to plan to leave.
Three years ago my first deadline passed as I outstayed the two year limit I initially set for myself. A recent breakup had left me crying over bus schedules more than usual, but that made me all the more determined to prove that I could make this city more than a cemetery for my failures.
And then came a new love. And then came a new job. And another new job. And a best friend. So plans got placed on a mental moving list. I’ve been making plans to plan.
At least 16 seasons ago, I first started picking out the appropriate season for a move. Will I trade the humdrum of July seasonal depression for chafing thigh sweat and dropping ice cubes down my shirt? Or is it safer to leave the beautiful moderate San Francisco Fall for a mosaic of changing leaves and autumnal sweaters, both lovely in their own way? I’ve only ever successfully ruled out winter, because you’d have to be a crazy person to willingly move all your belongings three thousand miles while driving away from sunshine and towards two feet of snow.
My more grown-up feeling acquisitions all have a place on the moving list: the $40 folding step-stool, my toolkit, every overpriced face mask and serum I own, some sensible nude pumps, the Danny Lyon coffee table book. But I like to think I’ll have the fortitude to rid myself of some of my sillier acquisitions from the last five years: a mug of Marvel supervillain Carnage (I don’t know who that is), a U2 vinyl (I hate U2), one of the two fans I bought when I needed to air out my flooded hallway carpet (I caused the flood). Maybe even get rid of the worn out sheets and Target towels and trade up.
And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. So when I move, I’ll have to finally place everything else into a column on the list. Keep it or leave it. Do I bring the worn out sneakers that have only ever known sand and fog? Do I leave the restlessness in my legs that drags me on adventures through neighborhoods and makes me plan to plan to leave? What about the blonde dyed hair or the lumps and bumps along my waistline? Do I get to keep all the love I’ve tricked out of people here and the grudges I’ve held so dear? Will friends scoff when I pack up my Ulysses S. Grant Pez dispenser?
When I move, I will put everything in a box and every box will have a place and that place won’t be the corner of the room.
When I move, I’ll get a cat and name her Stevie Nicks.
When I move, there will be a spot on my nightstand for my journal so I write in it every night.
When I move, my space heater will get a break during the summer.
When I move, I’ll stop dreaming in fragments of the past and I’ll sleep through the night.
When I move, the fog will clear and my painful brain will mend.
When I move, I’ll have to reckon with the seasons and living in a world without plans to move.
When I move, putting dreams on hold will no longer be part of a practical plan, but instead a sad indication of weak moral fiber.
When I move, there’s a small, terrifying chance nothing changes at all. And maybe that’s why I’m still here.
