The end of it
Ten days to Boston.
I'm still vaguely worried that we'll show up and there will be no keys. No lease (though I know we signed it). No apartment. Just a truck full of our material possessions and a deeply sinking fear.
But that's to be expected, considering how I get whenever I have to move. The first time I moved to Massachusetts, I freaked out and started crying the first time my key didn't work in my front door. One of my roommates came home and let me in, explaining that the lock stuck sometimes. I went out and bought a new lock and even switched the deadbolt the next day.
I'm just that stripe of crazy.
A bigger worry involves finding a job. I know there are temp agencies, but what if that doesn't turn anything in my favor? I guess I could wait tables...though I have no experience doing that. I suppose I'll just have to wait.
During the times when I'm not worrying, I'm waxing sentimental over people who I've seen for the last time (John and Robin, Katie, John X, Celia, Henry, probably Carolina, possibly Meredith, dozens of classmates, and all of my professors). I'm convinced that while sites like Facebook firmly cement my anti-social tendencies--allowing me to skip out on things like my 10-year high school reunion--it also causes many of my friends to check up on how I'm doing without actually talking to me at all. And it's hard to find fault with that because of how busy everyone is, myself included.
That, compounded with all of the PA friends I've lived closer to since having moved to New York, but haven't seen much of (or even at all) in these past two years...well, it makes me feel forgettable. There's basically no way that I could stay in New York, but I hate leaving people who I know I will miss, while simultaneously knowing that I'll likely never see them again.
On the other hand, I know that I'm emotionally flanked by my chosen family at all times. I've got a great support system and I'd be adrift were it not for them. I have friends who have driven hundreds of miles to see me, to help me move (repeatedly), to share the milestones of my young life, to show me they care. I'm so appreciative and undeserving of it all. It's a balance I'm perennially striking.
And I'm reminded of it by nearly everything. Here I am, scurrying from room to room, dashing books and frames and art and dishes into boxes. Tape, shape, pack, shift. I'm compartmentalizing my life and labeling it with a Sharpie. I consider myself lucky to not be burdened by materialism, but it just seems to overflow.
Do we have enough boxes?
...maybe.
Can we get more?
...perhaps.
Sometimes, I wonder how together I really am. I rush about, doing and trying and sometimes it works, while others, it doesn't. But I can't do otherwise. I don't often have time to stop and consider the alternative (that being: having a life where I would have time to stop...), but it's staring me in the face when I see that there are boxes that I've not opened since I left Massachusetts. I guess that's better than having a box unopened since Pennsylvania. Which reminds me...it's been five years since I lived there. Sometimes, I feel that it shaped me not at all, but it's still the answer I have to give to the query, "Where are you from?"
Lately, that question has been, "Are you from Boston?" And I have to say no. Although I call it home, I'm not a Bostonian. And that makes me happy, in a way. I can love it for all the things it's not. It's not suburban. It's not painfully awkward or backwards and it doesn't embarrass me to consider spending my time there. It's not wasteful. It's not a place known only for its commerce.
SIDE NOTE: At 17, I once told someone that I was from Whitehall, PA and his response was, "Oh! That's where the malls are!" There you have my adolescence.
I couldn't be myself or find myself or shape myself in a place like that. And now, so many years later, it seems that I'm an amalgam of all the places I've been. Each of my homes has informed my character and I like to think that I carry all of them with me, for better and worse because there's something to be learned from a negative experience as often as a positive one.
That's the part that makes going home so appealing. Even in the light of all the hardships that everyone faces, when you find that one place that makes you feel whole and welcome and exactly yourself (which Boston does for me), it's the obvious choice and there's no question in which decision to make. It only becomes a question of when.
On a final note, I don't want it to sound like I have a one-sided relationship with the city: Oh, Boston makes ME feel this and me, me, me... I love Boston for all the things it's always been: an educational center, a state capitol that isn't a vacuum, a city that adores its history, a place not fed on pretense or fakery, a city that doesn't need its visitors to subscribe to an unachievable ideal...but now I'm making comparisons.
Once we leave, I'll be glad to return to New York as a visitor, however, as nice as it is to visit, I'd never want to live here.
I'm still vaguely worried that we'll show up and there will be no keys. No lease (though I know we signed it). No apartment. Just a truck full of our material possessions and a deeply sinking fear.
But that's to be expected, considering how I get whenever I have to move. The first time I moved to Massachusetts, I freaked out and started crying the first time my key didn't work in my front door. One of my roommates came home and let me in, explaining that the lock stuck sometimes. I went out and bought a new lock and even switched the deadbolt the next day.
I'm just that stripe of crazy.
A bigger worry involves finding a job. I know there are temp agencies, but what if that doesn't turn anything in my favor? I guess I could wait tables...though I have no experience doing that. I suppose I'll just have to wait.
During the times when I'm not worrying, I'm waxing sentimental over people who I've seen for the last time (John and Robin, Katie, John X, Celia, Henry, probably Carolina, possibly Meredith, dozens of classmates, and all of my professors). I'm convinced that while sites like Facebook firmly cement my anti-social tendencies--allowing me to skip out on things like my 10-year high school reunion--it also causes many of my friends to check up on how I'm doing without actually talking to me at all. And it's hard to find fault with that because of how busy everyone is, myself included.
That, compounded with all of the PA friends I've lived closer to since having moved to New York, but haven't seen much of (or even at all) in these past two years...well, it makes me feel forgettable. There's basically no way that I could stay in New York, but I hate leaving people who I know I will miss, while simultaneously knowing that I'll likely never see them again.
On the other hand, I know that I'm emotionally flanked by my chosen family at all times. I've got a great support system and I'd be adrift were it not for them. I have friends who have driven hundreds of miles to see me, to help me move (repeatedly), to share the milestones of my young life, to show me they care. I'm so appreciative and undeserving of it all. It's a balance I'm perennially striking.
And I'm reminded of it by nearly everything. Here I am, scurrying from room to room, dashing books and frames and art and dishes into boxes. Tape, shape, pack, shift. I'm compartmentalizing my life and labeling it with a Sharpie. I consider myself lucky to not be burdened by materialism, but it just seems to overflow.
Do we have enough boxes?
...maybe.
Can we get more?
...perhaps.
Sometimes, I wonder how together I really am. I rush about, doing and trying and sometimes it works, while others, it doesn't. But I can't do otherwise. I don't often have time to stop and consider the alternative (that being: having a life where I would have time to stop...), but it's staring me in the face when I see that there are boxes that I've not opened since I left Massachusetts. I guess that's better than having a box unopened since Pennsylvania. Which reminds me...it's been five years since I lived there. Sometimes, I feel that it shaped me not at all, but it's still the answer I have to give to the query, "Where are you from?"
Lately, that question has been, "Are you from Boston?" And I have to say no. Although I call it home, I'm not a Bostonian. And that makes me happy, in a way. I can love it for all the things it's not. It's not suburban. It's not painfully awkward or backwards and it doesn't embarrass me to consider spending my time there. It's not wasteful. It's not a place known only for its commerce.
SIDE NOTE: At 17, I once told someone that I was from Whitehall, PA and his response was, "Oh! That's where the malls are!" There you have my adolescence.
I couldn't be myself or find myself or shape myself in a place like that. And now, so many years later, it seems that I'm an amalgam of all the places I've been. Each of my homes has informed my character and I like to think that I carry all of them with me, for better and worse because there's something to be learned from a negative experience as often as a positive one.
That's the part that makes going home so appealing. Even in the light of all the hardships that everyone faces, when you find that one place that makes you feel whole and welcome and exactly yourself (which Boston does for me), it's the obvious choice and there's no question in which decision to make. It only becomes a question of when.
On a final note, I don't want it to sound like I have a one-sided relationship with the city: Oh, Boston makes ME feel this and me, me, me... I love Boston for all the things it's always been: an educational center, a state capitol that isn't a vacuum, a city that adores its history, a place not fed on pretense or fakery, a city that doesn't need its visitors to subscribe to an unachievable ideal...but now I'm making comparisons.
Once we leave, I'll be glad to return to New York as a visitor, however, as nice as it is to visit, I'd never want to live here.