Hiddens First

The storage room off the patio would be full of seasonal things if we were what we like to call "real people." But since we are not yet that, since we are recovering college students, it is full of all the boxes and bags we've saved from the stuff we toted, the stuff that was sent us, and the stuff we bought.

We put it there and forgot; today, I bust it out again.

Before, I was freaked out by the proximity of the end-times. Now, they are actually upon me, and I've shrugged cheerfully, rolled up my sleeves, and begun to pack. I have a lot of experience at packing and moving. In 2007, when my life began its pattern of changing every three to six months, I began that pattern by physically moving somewhere in that designated time period. Years of dorm experience has made me fully capable of this.

Even more than I had realized, actually. I used to hate packing and moving, not only for what it meant (leaving), but for the physical pain and logistical nightmare it can entail. Last week I looked around my room and couldn't fathom where to begin. When I got back from Nashville yesterday, I sat down without even thinking and began on my nightstand drawers.

I developed a way of packing that was in line with my wait-til-the-last-minute-to-believe-you're-going mentality. Hiddens first. Clear out desk drawers, closets, under the bed... everywhere that you can't see at first, first. Then, when you go to sleep at night, it still looks like home, though it's slowly emptying of you. Your poster is still on the wall, and your calendar, and you can ignore for the moment that everything around you is physically now hollow.

It's a compromise I must have struck somewhere between the nightmare of actually waiting too long to pack, and the loathing of sleeping in an empty room.

I looked into one of my old rooms while I was at Vandy over the weekend, since Aa-chan lived on one of the halls we used to run. 168, bearing not even the faintest trace of me, my life, the suffering I endured there (it was a fairly rough year, junior). Such is the way of dorm life, and even apartment life. It doesn't take long for the stamp of energy to fade. It may have been achingly important to me at the time.. here I worked, there I sat, down there I knelt to cry.. but ultimately, a few months later, someone else filled it, all of me moved somewhere else. The only thing, then, that seems to bear one's stamp longer than physical spaces are the people with whom you spent time there.

Which completely explains my mad dash to spend time with everyone as much as I can in these final days. I can't say why today I'm content to clear the closet and nightstand, and maybe the drawers too. Today, the hiddens, tomorrow the visibles. I'm not even interested in my mad dash to make terrible decisions (because I'm leaving, or because it's May?) right now. Like I said.. it's a shrug, a rolling of the sleeves, maybe a passing thought of shikata ga nai.