All my bags are(n’t) packed
Posted on May 14, 2008 - Filed Under Journal
I’m looking in the mirror and my highlights are halfway down my head, just like I predicted they’d be when I got my hair dyed in September. Only they don’t look trashy or fake or lazy, like I ran out of money and/or desire to keep dyeing my hair. They’ve faded to a sparkling golden bronze shimmer I like to look for.
I hope this is like that.
I won’t start packing because I don’t believe I have to. I’ve lived in this little apartment for nine months. My mess is all over the floors. I remember it empty, but it was so long ago that Andrew and I scrubbed the floors on our hands and knees, putting our love into the wood and tile to make it ours.
We slept in my bed the first time after going shopping at Shaws in the middle of the night after work, tired from trips back and forth to the Volvo to bring in the bags of frozen food and produce. Wrapping our arms around each other to find comfort in the newness, we slept and waited for the first morning to take away the first night.
It’s mine now and I can’t make it empty again.
The days are passing sooner than I can count them. The last time I counted, I had twenty days. Today I have fifteen. I wake up, go to work, come home, shower, dress, go out with friends, come home, sleep. The routine pushes me through the days too quickly to protest. The first feels like the end of the world.
I don’t know what Warwick looks like, aside from the pictures Andrew posted. I don’t know where our apartment is, or the grocery store, or the library. I don’t have a job yet. June, July and August loom vaguely before me, like those pages of blurry dots and swirls you stare at in the hopes of making them into 3-D images.
I’m going to cry.
Whenever I see someone for the last time, I’m going to sob. In their arms, in the car on the way home, in bed with Andrew that night. I don’t know how to leave the people whose secrets I’ve kept. Who I’ve cuddled with while watching movies. Who I’ve sat up and talked with late at night. Who I’ve cried to. Who I’ve given advice to and consoled. Who I’ve laughed with. Who I’ve broken laws with. Who I’ve made pinky promises with. Who I’ve grown to love. Who I’ve grown up with.
It’s just too hard.
But in the end I know myself and I know I’m strangling here. New Hampshire is no longer new and cannot hold me. Portsmouth seems mellow and Boston seems small. I need bigger cities, towns that are quaint in new ways. I need to push myself. Otherwise I’m going to be one of those people who graduates high school and never leaves a 20 mile radius of the house they grew up in.
I won’t do that.
I’m so much bigger than this.
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