Dispatch from a move, day #1
God I hate having things. I spent three years out of college living and traveling abroad, never amassing much of anything besides photos. It was liberating, not having more than what could be packed in an hour or two. I’ve always been a purger anyways, taking pleasure from the piles of trash and donations resulting from the merciless application of my rule of disposal of anything I haven’t used or looked at in the last year.
Yet now that I’m almost at three years in New York, stuff has finally caught up with me. I came here with two pairs of shoes; I now have two big duffel bags full of them. I own an insane amount of cookware, cookbooks, and cooking appliances. I own two suits, various cat accessories, and a hair dryer. Yesterday, I came to hate all of these things: moving will do that to you.
This pales in comparison to my boyfriend’s collection of crap. Unlike me, he has spent all of his life (minus a summer here or there) within a 200 mile radius of New York. He is also, as I learned yesterday, a bit of a hoarder, seemingly spending his last 26 years amassing an impressive collection of books, tech stuff, clothes, and bike parts. Lugging his 13+ boxes of books down the four flights of stairs from his old place, the thought crossed my mind that this would be justifiable grounds for breaking up with someone. Of course, I was not in a rational place.
It took forever: we were at it for about 12 hours, with breaks. At the end of the night, I set the bed up while he popped a bottle of champagne we had bought to celebrate. We couldn’t find the wine glasses, or any glasses, or anything, really, as our possessions were stacked in piles on the kitchen floor. Thus we drank it out of a coffee mug and liquid measuring cup, respectively, before passing out from exhaustion.
1 year ago