Brimming in the Wake

For someone who is OCD but attempting to get better, moving is a catastrophic nightmare. I’ve packed 7 boxes so far, and spend the majority of my daily life at work, when I’m not at home and staring in blank looks at the disaster area that used to be my orderly and neat apartment, which is now complete chaos planning what I’m going to pack/do/accomplish once I get home – plans get in the way of that – meeting night, night at the girl’s house (although that’s not a bad distraction, and really I enjoy getting away from the tornado area that my little house used to be to spend time with her, and every time I see her these days it’s like I haven’t seen her in months, even if it was just that morning, or the night before, etc) and nothing really goes the way I intend to. As it stands now, before night of packing/cleaning/tossing old trash part 2 commences, my entire bedroom is done, the last box left open in order to receive my alarm clock, charges and other necessary items that cannot be tucked away until the morning of the move. The closet has been cleaned out and dismantled. Pictures are still on the walls, cause I cannot bare to look at the wall’s nakedness, lest it feel like a sanitarium and no longer a habitable space.

The plan for tonight is 1) Laundry. 2) pack up non-essential items on my desk, and leave the box there. 3) pack up my cds, since I rarely listen to them anyway – and this is ironic, since they were only unpacked after the great ceiling disaster. 4) tackle the smaller of the two closets and get everything either packed or thrown away. 5) toss out the majority of the items that have been collected in my two catch-all drawers under my dish cabinets. 6) pull out the plastic drawers from the big closet, go through them and throw away the things I no longer need. Place notebooks and random writing paper bits in the drawers in an orderly way. 7) perhaps tackle the rest of that big closet as well. That should keep me sufficiently busy. And amid all that, I have to find a way to watch all the dvr-ed programs I’ve collected and not had time to watch, since I am getting a new DVR box and they cannot be transferred over – I also have to make a list of all the shows that I DO dvr, because for the life of me, I will never remember the days, times and channels of what I watch. DVR has made me lazy. And forgetful.

The cats are taking all this upheaval about as well as can be expected. Booger has taken it upon herself to dismantle all the boxes that are left in the living room, so they are currently taking up a big chunk of my bedroom making a fort against the wall, next to a pile (small, but still) of the girl’s items that have been left there over various weekends. I feel like I’m living in a war zone. I cannot move until June 1, and by the time that rolls around, my house will no longer feel like home, and I will have to go digging through a mountain to find essential items that were packed erroneously. Honestly, I just can’t wait to get out of there. Now that the packing has officially started, two weeks ahead of the move date, it is now real, which means I am painstakingly aware of how much work has to be done. Yet, in the middle of all of this, when I’m looking around at how much has already been accomplished with only one or two days actually working on packing, I’m realizing it’s not as big of a deal as I had feared or anticipated. I’m throwing away so much stuff, stuff I don’t use or need reminders of any longer. And I really don’t have that much.

Devon and I spoke yesterday, and while she does feel twinges of anxiety, and I don’t blame her – this is the first time she’s moved in with someone, this is the first time for a lot of things with her, and the process is by its very nature anxiety ridden – it is overshadowed by excitement and hope. She will gradually (or not so gradually, we will see) start bringing over some of her things once I am settled – I don’t imagine much headway in this area until after the wedding madness has passed. But I’m hoping the move into our life smash will be gradually spending more and more time together until we realize, one day, that she’s there – that she’s living there, officially on paper or not, and that our journey from two very distinctive and separate lives has officially merged into our life together – where we still have our own space, our own plans, our own things apart from the relationship, but where we come home and share those things with each other – our hardships, our joys, successes and setbacks. I look forward to evenings at the kitchen table after a good dinner, laughing about the day, telling stories of our co-workers or friends, cleaning up together before heading to bed. As we were driving by my soon-to-be home on Monday night, I pointed and said “look honey, it’s my house” and she corrected me, almost immediately

“no, baby – that’s OUR house….our first home together”. It really made me happy, and made my head start thinking of it in those terms. Yes, it will be my place for a few months in the interim, as things start to shift from mine or hers to ours, but it is our home. It’s where the beauty of this real life thing begins, and I can’t even imagine the happy memories that will imbibe every room of that place, small though it may be. I want to cover it in memories.

My old place is full of memories too – memories of her, and of us – memories of old friends, of moving in there, of all the things that I’ve seen and done there. Part of me knows it will be difficult to leave, but part of me realizes that place is my last connection to a few things, and wants to say goodbye to them for good.

Lots to do – have a meeting later on today at work, which at first made me panic, but I think I’m doing okay now…working on it anyway.