On Moving and Loneliness

Moving is draining.

It’s physically draining, of course. It takes effort to put all of one’s things into boxes and bags, and it’s a time drain for the same reason. It drains money (gas, renting a truck, miscellaneous things you never think of until you need them). It drains relationships (calling in favors, strain and bickering during the move).

But, for me at least, it’s mostly emotionally draining.

For the last several years, I’ve lived with my best friend. He joined the army recently and left a lot of stuff behind, some of which I wanted and some of which I tossed into boxes and bags at the last possible moment to sort through later.

I opened a box and saw our things, mixed, and was reminded of the last several years of my life. Our library, with my trashy vampire novels and his Chinese-American literature. His computer, to be stowed away until needed or he gets it. My Guitar Hero controllers. Our pots and pans. Our lives.

I set up his credenza and shoved his bookshelf into the room I can’t help but call “Austin’s room,” no matter how hard I try to call it the spare bedroom or study. I saw the remnants of his influence in my life as I put away sparkly decorations and fold his comforter, which still smells like him despite being washed.

I opened boxes I never touched at my previous place, see things I packed quickly and forgot from our first apartment together two years ago. I sorted through plastic drawers and tried not to cry over the couch (our couch) I had to leave behind. Because it’s just a couch. It shouldn’t matter.

But it does. That couch is where we watched House and Bones. That’s where we played WoW. Where we sat and talked and laughed and grew together. And I stood there, in the room I can’t help but think of as his, looking at the barely organized piles of books and boxes, full of our things, and realized I couldn’t take it, that I miss him too much, I regret not saying enough, and I am too crushingly alone at that moment and this to unpack so much as one more thing.

I’ll see him again, but our life together is over and I’m mourning.

That’s all there is to that, really; my friend is no longer actively in my life and I am sad.

Revelations this is not.