WE'RE MOVING! The big day is Tuesday and I've just begun to get things organized. Currently, our apartment is looks like a war zone of boxes, bags, and that styrofoam stuff you put between dishes. It'd be really cool to play paintball in here right now.
Kevin and I have moved every year since we met each other. The first time was when we moved in together at the start of what was supposed to be a platonic relationship. SPOILER ALERT: That platonic relationship thing didn't work out. Anyway, the first time we moved was easy. He had very few possessions and had already settled himself in the new apartment. I was relocating from my college dorm.
The first time we moved, all we did was show up with a bunch of trash bags and shove everything we possibly could into them. I literally dragged my arm across my desk and scraped everything into the bag. We poured out dresser drawers, tossed in some odds and ends, and rolled away in his van. It took one trip.
Every time we've moved, things have been a little bigger. First the trash bags. Then the second move happened in a hurry, but we were fine because at the time we still owned next to nothing. Moving here to New Haven last year (third move) was a big one, because it was an hour away. Kevin worked the whole day, so my parents literally packed me into my own car with both snakes curled around my neck. I drove an hour trying to see over the piles of stuff in my backseat, and also trying to prevent the snakes from getting into trouble. And from choking me unconscious as I drove down the highway at 70 mph.
This time, our move is a multiple-day process with to-do lists, appointments, and at least some attempt at an organizational system. We have a U-Haul (I'm hoping I don't get the one with the spider painted on the side. I hate that guy.) and about a million boxes and we're doing the whole thing around his sacred work schedule. Seriously, getting him to take time off is impossible. Tomorrow I will pack more boxes, and Tuesday we'll move all the furniture and follow with the boxes, then the odds and ends. We're expecting to be out by this weekend, thus concluding a year in the SMALLEST AND MOST BROKEN APARTMENT EVER.
At this moment I am sitting here reflecting on the progression of our moves. So simple at first, and now we have furniture, dishware, books, art supplies, etc. Our material possessions mean nothing, in the end. Yet, the increasing difficulty of these moves makes me think of how our relationship has gone through a similar progression. With each year, we have collected more stuff but also more memories, more trust, more of the indescribable connection we have today. We do not need material possessions to be happy, instead we are grateful for the sense of security that comes from having the other person there. The juxtaposition between what we had and what we have is startling, and of course I can't help but feel some sense of pride. Not because I have more things, per se, but because we have done such an amazing job of infusing our lives with meaning. With purpose. I realize that my life is exactly what I want it to be.
Sitting in the home my husband and I have built together, I am full of love and gratitude.
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